Generic brands and markets

This quote at Dailykos caught my attention on trends for the generic drugs markets:

For years, doxycycline has been a valuable drug for physicians who treat the indigent — unemployed or underemployed folks without insurance. A staple of $4 drug lists, it can be used to treat everything from bronchitis to “walking” pneumonia to urinary tract infections to skin infections to acne to venereal disease—and it covers some rarer infections like Lyme’s and is sometimes used for malaria prevention, too.



http://articles.latimes.com/…

A CVS pharmacist in Los Angeles, who asked that his name by withheld because of fear of retaliation by the company, shared with me the average wholesale price of different makers’ doxycycline, as made available to pharmacists by the McKesson Connect online ordering system.
The system shows that the average wholesale price of 100 doxycycline pills made by Watson with a strength of 100 milligrams is $328.20. The same number of doxycycline pills at the same strength made by Mylan cost $1,314.83.

Remember this sort of thing is in addition to general shortages and disruption in the US concerning important drugs. See these two Angry Bear posts from 2008 helping to look for trends in the generic drug markets Trends for generic drugs to watch and GAO report on generics and devices, Shortages of prescribed drugs 2011, Competition in the drug markets 2012, and Drug shortages and markets.