Addressing escalating health care costs in ageing populations by increasing generic medicine utilization

Abstract

With the ageing of European populations and rising prevalence of age-related chronic diseases, access to affordable medical treatment will become increasingly important over the next decades. Promoting the use of generic medicines by the elderly can contribute to sustaining European health care systems. This paper aims to show how increased utilization of generic medicines can address the challenge of escalating health care costs due to population ageing. To this effect, the paper calculates the generic market share for common diseases affecting the elderly and computes the savings from increasing the generic market share for these diseases. Data on the off-patent retail market in the 27 European countries in 2009 were derived from IMS Health. The findings indicate that Europe does not realize the full potential of generic medicines to sustain affordable medical treatment for ageing populations: the generic market share ranged from 6% for osteoporosis to 71% for pain and inflammation. Increasing generic market shares could yield savings of €4–16 billion for the 27 countries studied. The size of savings varies widely between diseases, with the lowest savings to be achieved in cardiac rhythm diseases and the highest savings in cancer, pain and inflammation, and hypertension. Promoting the use of generic medicines by the elderly can enhance patient compliance with treatment, improve health outcomes and reduce health care expenditure, and thus is a cost-effective policy.