Average price of brand-name drugs more than 18 times higher than generics

A new report on changes in generic drug pricing from AARP’s Public Policy Institute finds that brand-name drugs in 2017 were, on average, more than 18 times the price of their generic counterparts. The average annual cost for a generic drug taken regularly was $365, but the price for the brand-name equivalent was close to $6,800. The report also found that of the 390 generic drugs analyzed, all but three of them underwent a change in pricing. Most saw a decrease in price, while 90 went up in cost, with a common antidepressant called sertraline HCl going up in price by nearly 200%.