Some parents of children with attention deficit disorder got a welcome surprise last month. If they went to refill a prescription of Intuniv, a popular ADD treatment, they discovered that its monthly cost had dropped by 80 percent. The reason: The patent on the drug had expired at the end of 2014, and the generic was available.
The process of using generic substitutes for expensive prescription drugs can be speeded up even more, saving U.S. consumers billions of dollars a year. This opportunity comes from an unusual source: the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty.
The trade deal among Asian-Pacific countries is nearing completion, but one issue is causing an impasse: the demand by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry that America's trading partners respect a 12-year timetable giving the companies exclusive rights to their patents. The U.S. should drop that demand and instead accommodate its trading partners by reducing the 12-year rule. The nation already has the longest data-exclusivity period in the world. Even Europe, with pharmaceutical giants such as Roche, Novartis and Bayer, allows shorter time spans.