Prices Likey to Drop for 3 FDA approved ED medications (including Levitra and Cialis) when Viagra Patent Expires.
So says, BNET writer Jim Edwards, authority on the pharmaceutical industry, in his article 10/21/09. The full article by Jim Edwards about Viagra’s patent expiration goes on to say the cost for sildenafil citrate (Viagra’s active ingredient), could drop 80%. So other ED pill companies would need to drop their prices to compete with this new generic Viagra, once it’s available.
Particularly since, as Dr. Dennis Lin of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York points out, “Most likely, the logical, the ethical thing to do is prescribe the generic. It’s cheaper, especially if the patient is paying out-of-pocket.”
In addition to prices coming down on brand name Viagra, Levitra and Cialis, Viagra’s parent company Pfizer, may also produce an alternate drug. Sildenafil could be used in a newly branded lower priced pill, or the Pfizer recipe lent to other manufacturers: thus allowing Pfizer to keep that giant piece of the market they’ve held with their exclusive Viagra patent since 1998.
It’s typical for competing drugs with the same medical purpose to take a big drop in price when a patent expires. And when the patent for Viagra expires in March 2012, it brings with it an evolution in in the treatment of ED–allowing millions of men who were left out of the market due to high prices, to be added to the ranks of ED pill users. And it’s likely the foreign or US illegal generic Viagra vendors who’ve been selling pills on line for several years, could loose their faithful customers–after all, as of Spring ’12 they’ll have a legal and safe, low cost generic answer to their ED woes.
To read more about the Viagra patent expiration, visit the Research Center pages at Accessrx.com
Guest author Accessrx.com: Providing FDA approved medications like Levitra, Cialis, and Viagra online since 1998, and providing an exhaustive library on all consumer medical topics, plus Dr. Daniel Williams’ podcasts on breaking medical news.
