Kaye Leddy and her husband take about a dozen prescription medications between them. Even with insurance, it gets expensive.
"It's over $300 and some dollars. Per month? Yes," says Kaye.
That's why they're looking forward to seeing a price drop on some popular brand name drugs.
More than a dozen blockbuster drugs, including Lipitor, Plavix and Zyprexa will lose their patents within the next year. Even more will lose theirs over the next 5 years.
That means cheaper generic alternatives will hit the market.
"This is big," says Jim Reginell, of Nisenholtz Pharmacy in Northeast
He believes the savings could be substantial.
For example, when the cholesterol-lowering statin Zocor was still on patent, it could cost up to 170-dollars without insurance. But when that patent expired, the generics came out and this can cost as low as $4.
But Dr. Albert Wertheimer of Temple University School of Pharmacy says it will take some time for those low prices to arrive.
Once a patent expires, only 1 generic is allowed on the market for the first 6 months.
"But at the end of the 6 months, another 12 companies jump in that have been approved. Then the price goes way down," says Dr. Wertheimer, who spent years in the pharmaceutical industry.
He says there tends to be a U-shaped curve, when it comes to generics: prices go down, but they bottom out.
After a few years of stability, "The companies that didn't make money in it drop out, so there are fewer companies in it, and the price goes back up again."
Consumers aren't the only winners.
Local generic drug makers like Teva Pharmaceuticals in North Wales, Montgomery County, will also get a boom in business,and that could generate more jobs.
The Leddys will be happy to save some mone, and to see others less fortunate benefit.
Kaye says, "We know a couple of people who are having a hard time making ends meet- they don't even take their medicine every day, it's every other day."
Dr. Wertheimer says the major drug makers aren't going to let their revenues vanish. They are increasingly getting into the business of making their own generic drugs - often to sell alongside their own brand-name medication.
"Novartis has a generic division, Bristol Myers Squibb has a generic divison, Glaxo Smithkline has a generic division, many of the others do as well," he notes.
