There is a psychological and social conviction that brands, in any type of domain, are superior quality-wise. Although shallow, this is most true when speaking about clothes, perfumes, make-up and card. However, the same belief is true in the case of drugs. Patients believe that the better known the brand is and, consequently, the more expensive the drug, the more effective it is. Even some physicians are drawn into this myth, and t prompts them to prescribe the most expensive drugs, from the most famous pharmaceutical companies, to their patients.

Of course, there is some psychological comfort in the mind of the patients when they are prescribed what are falsely believed to be “the best drugs.” Recently, it seems that the constantly rising costs of prescription drugs are such a severe problem that it has become a full-fledged policy issue. Basically, the brand-name drugs that are prescribed without them being the only efficient drugs for certain conditions are just emptying the budgets allocated to patients and the funds of both private and public insurers. Thus, adherence to important medications is reduced, which is obviously and already visibly detrimental to the health care system.

Apparently, the whole mess was created when pharmaceutical companies publicly claimed that brand-name drugs are more effective that generic name drugs. Because these claims came from the drug manufacturers themselves, they managed to seed doubt in the minds of both patients and physicians. Studies have been conducted to show that the difference between generic-name drugs and brand-name drugs is just the brand itself, and, consequently, the higher price of the brand-name drugs.