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GPhA Calls on Senate to Maintain a Fully Funded FDA And Office of Generic Drugs

WASHINGTON, D.C. (OCT. 19, 2011) – The Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) today underscored the importance of a fully funded Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Office of Generic Drugs (OGD), and called on the Senate to uphold the funding levels allocated to the agency by the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations.

“At a time when lawmakers in Washington and across the country are under enormous pressure to cut budgets and reduce spending, we applaud the Committee’s foresight in recognizing the importance of a fully funded FDA,” Ralph G. Neas, President and CEO of GPhA, said. “Today, the use of safe and effective generic prescription drugs is saving consumers and the U.S. health care system more than $3 billion every week. It is absolutely critical that the Senate provide the FDA with the appropriate funding to ensure that patients continue to have access to these medicines at a price they can afford.”

Currently, more than 2,000 generic drug applications are awaiting OGD action and as many as 365 of those are for first time generic drugs, according to the FDA. As a result, consumers and the government are forced to pay brand drug prices for prescriptions that could be available in affordable generic versions if the FDA is adequately funded.

Deep cuts in FDA’s budget could further encumber the timely approval of generic medicines, which have proven to provide savings for the federal government and the health care system as a whole. GPhA’s recently released economic analysis of U.S. generic drug usage — developed independently by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics and IMS Health — found that the use of generic prescription drugs has yielded $931 billion in national health expenditure savings over the past 10 years, including $158 billion in savings in 2010 alone.

“The sustainability of our health care system, including vital programs like Medicaid and Medicare, is absolutely dependent on the savings generated through the use of generic drugs. These savings can continue only by sufficiently funding the FDA to assure timely approvals of new generic drugs,” Neas added. “By all accounts, fully funding the FDA provides an enormous return on investment while also providing millions of Americans with the medicines they need at prices they can afford.”

GPhA represents the manufacturers and distributors of finished generic pharmaceuticals, manufacturers and distributors of bulk pharmaceutical chemicals, and suppliers of other goods and services to the generic industry. Generic pharmaceuticals fill 78 percent of the prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. but consume just 25 percent of the total drug spending. Additional information is available at gphaonline.org.

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