(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released its latest investigative report – an in-depth study of competition within the pharmaceutical industry.  The report, entitled David v. Goliath:  A New Front in the Ongoing Battle Between Generic and Brand-Name Drug Companies, focuses on the cost to taxpayers of government policies regulating pharmaceutical products, specifically the regulation of generic drugs in relation to their brand-name counterparts.

Generic drugs are those that are pharmaceutically equivalent to a brand-name drug.  While the companies that produce the drugs are different, the products themselves are chemically identical.  Yet increasingly, government regulators – particularly at the state level – are restricting access to generic drugs.  Not surprisingly, the new regulations are the result of intense lobbying on the part of the name-brand drug companies.  Once the regulations are in place, the brand-name companies have no competition in the marketplace.

“Essentially, these brand-name drug companies are trying to regulate and legislate their competition out of business,” said Thomas A. Schatz, president of CAGW.  “They claim that they’re acting in the best interests of consumers by seeking to restrict drugs of lesser quality, but the chemistry says it just isn’t so.  These are the same drugs, at the same purity, at the same dosage, but often at radically different prices.”

CAGW – a 600,000 member, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government – has been active for more than a year in state-by-state battles to preserve access to generic medicines, particularly in the area of Narrow Therapeutic Index drugs.