I work in a nursing home. We have seniors coming to our facility and we see them come with medications that are totally new, brand names that are very similar to the generic drugs we have. I was concerned with the simple diabetic drug people have been taking. All the pharmaceutical companies have to do is change the dosage. It's slightly tweaked to evergreen it. That would bump it up to a new brand-name medication.
We see a huge epidemic in diabetes. We also see medications that are available as generics. The pharmaceutical companies, however, push them at doctors at conferences or while training. They slightly change the formula. It's a possibility and not even proven sometimes that the drug might help. People are paying an incredible amount for their medication. Our facility is run by the provincial government and the aim is to reduce costs, so we start with generics. The general population, however, is being victimized with the high prices of these medications.
For us, evergreening is a huge concern. It's not just going to be new medications that work. Some medications are just going to be transformed with a different name, a different formula.