There's a prevailing perception that name-brand = better. If we were talking about ketchup or something, that might even be correct, but in the context of medicine, get that perception out of your head.
Medicine has very specific regulation. If a name-brand med bottle says the pills inside it have 10mg of chemical-X, those pills are legally required to have exactly 10mg of chem-X in each pill. If the generic-brand knock-off bottle says it's pills have 10mg of chem-X... it's literally the exact same product. The pills might be colored or shaped differently, but effect, potency, side effects, etc will be medically identical.
I personally suffer from allergies, so I'm going to use Zyrtec as an example. I was on a road trip recently and symptoms were getting bad, so in an act of desperation I pulled over to the nearest store (Walgreens) and grabbed a small bottle of what I knew worked - Zyrtec. Bottle had 20 pills, each containing 10mg of cetirizine. Didn't even look at the price - it's just a bottle of allergy medicine, can't be that bad, right? Yeah... that was a mistake. Looked at the receipt later: $25.00.
Later I'm back home, I swing by our local Costco, famous for their ridiculously-huge-sized-everything, and I notice in their medicine aisle a generic "Allertec" (obvious Zyrtec knock off). This beefy-ass bottle contains 300 pills, each containing 10mg of cetirizine (the exact same thing in the Zyrtec bottle, only 30x more), at a cost of - I shit you not: $10.00.
Let's do some math here.
Zyrtec: 20 pills x 10mg = 200mg of cetirizine per bottle. $25.00 / 200mg = $0.125 per 1mg, or $1.25 per pill.
Allertec: 300 pills x 10mg = 3,000mg of cetirizine per bottle. $10.00 / 3,000mg = $0.003repeating per 1mg, or $0.03 per pill
$1.25 / $0.03 = 41.6repeating ...meaning the ZYRTEC WAS 41.6 TIMES AS EXPENSIVE AS THE EXACT SAME SHIT IN A BOTTLE WITH A DIFFERENT FUCKING LABEL ON IT!!
That's a price difference of 4,166%
Now, in fairness, the price difference per unit here is influenced by the difference between Costco (bulk) and Walgreens (convenience). I didn't notice if Costco carries actual name-brand Zyrtec or not, but if they do I'm sure the price per mg would be much less than Walgreens, so I guess part of the lesson here is to shop at bulk stores (Costco, Sams Club, BJ's Wholesale, etc) instead of convenience stores.
The real lesson, though, is to totally disregard the branding on medicine. "Zyrtec" isn't medicine; cetirizine is. "Zyrtec" is the name of a company that sells cetirizine. "Benadryl" isn't medicine; diphenhydramine is. "Tylenol" isn't medicine; acetaminophen is. "Advil" isn't medicine; Ibuprofen is.
Flip the bottle around and read the active ingredient - learn the names of the chemicals you ingest regularly, not just the names of the company that packaged it. Do some quick math to figure out the price per mg (or just eyeball it; when the difference is literally 40x, you don't need a calculator to tell you which is a ripoff) and buy the one that gives you the best price per dose. You will save a TON of money doing this. Whether the brand says "Tylenol" or "Equate Headache" or "Kirkland Headache" etc literally doesn't mean shit - those bottles are filled with acetaminophen, acetaminophen, and acetaminophen; just at vastly different price points.
You'll also find that a lot of different medicines use the same shit. Ever used "Excedrin"? It's acetaminophen and caffeine. What about "Excedrin Extra Strength"? Surely the "extra strength" means it's better, right? Nope. Also acetaminophen and caffeine... same dosage and everything. Literally the only difference between the two is the color of the bottle (green vs red) and the price. Or you could pop a generic acetaminophen and take it with your coffee: your body will process it exactly the same.
TLDR
Name-brand medicine is a horrific ripoff. Read the back of the bottle, learn what's actually in it, compare generic brands, and buy the cheapest one. The only thing that matters is the amount of the active ingredient you're getting per dollar. Also buy at bulk stores.
Submitted March 16, 2017 at 12:16AM by Haltus_Kain http://ift.tt/2mR2l2T
