The 4GRxANTED campaign was started by the passionate people who work in the generic industry. They go to work every day to ensure prescription medicines are more accessible to patients who need them most. Generic and biosimilar medicines are the backbone of the U.S. prescription drug market, supplying more than 9 out of every 10 prescriptions – that is over 4 billion patients each year!

Thanks to these medicines – alternatives to costly brand-name prescription medicines – patients, consumers, employers, and taxpayers have saved more than $2.6 trillion in the last decade. Generic drugs are a true success story. Yet, despite this success, the future of the industry is less certain than ever. We are seeing the risk of drug shortages increase as the long-term sustainability of generic manufacturing faces threats from market, policy, and regulatory factors. In many cases, the price of generic medicines has fallen to an unsustainably low level, resulting in market exits and creating the optimal conditions for the shortages we are now experiencing. The harsh reality is that if government policies continue to penalize low-cost generic medicines and block adoption of new generics and biosimilars, more generic drug manufacturers will exit the market, leaving millions of Americans without access to the medicines they rely on for lifesaving treatment and affordability. 

Generics and biosimilar medicines have become so vital that it’s difficult to imagine how we might manage our health, and our healthcare system, without them. The availability of a more affordable medicine option has become essential to our lives, and we need broad public support for the industry to help sustain it for the future.