There are some serious misunderstandings out there about the difference between name-brand drugs and generics, as well as some bizarre assumptions about the merits of newer drugs.
As a society, we’re addicted to drugs. Almost all of them are legal, and we’re not abusing them per se, but we want them desperately. The problem is that so many of the new prescription drugs we take are no better than old drugs that are less expensive. Since new drugs are almost always more expensive, we’re wasting money.

I want to state clearly the following caveats: I don’t hate drug companies. I don’t hate people who work for drug companies. I don’t even hate drugs. In fact, I, as a practicing physician, have seen drugs save lives, improve health, and make daily life incredibly better. But that doesn’t mean the pharmaceutical industry gets a free pass.

Often, completely new drugs come to market along with a huge advertising campaign and the promise of research showing their effectiveness. The problem is that to get FDA approval, drug companies only need to show that their drug is more effective than a placebo. That’s right – effective doesn’t mean better than what is already available, it means better than nothing.  And often, unless a drug company pays for a head-to-head comparison, this type of research just won’t happen. Once in a blue moon, however, these studies do happen. One of the biggest and best of them was the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT).

The other drugs in the ALLHAT study were good faith efforts to create new molecules to treat a chronic disease
So, if drug D is created, in the last step you wind up with half D and half D’ (the mirror image of D). The mirror image is usually inert and has no effect on the drug or the individual taking the drug, but it is left in because there is an expense to remove it. Years ago, the drug companies hit upon a brilliant idea. If they removed that non-working, mirror image part of the pill, they could claim they devised a new drug!

These aren’t even the worst offenders. In the worst cases, all that the drug companies change is the color of the pill.

Read more at http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/03/primer-brand-drugs-generics.html