Generic Lipitor Goes on Sale This Week: A Users' Guide

Generic Lipitor Goes on Sale This Week: A Users' Guide

Some 8.7 million Americans take Lipitor for high cholesterol. Starting Wednesday, they might get a different-looking pill when they go to fill a prescription and pay much less for it.

That's the day the U.S. patent on Pfizer Inc.'s blockbuster drug expires, allowing generic versions of the statin medication to go on sale. Many patients have been eagerly awaiting the lower insurance copayments that come with a generic medicine. Lipitor, the biggest-selling prescription drug of all time, generated sales of $10.7 billion last year.

The switch is generating confusion among some patients.

Richard Allen, a retired real-estate developer from Bainbridge Island, Wash., says that his 77-year-old wife has been taking Lipitor for years with positive results and worries that the generic won't work as well as the branded version. He says he has called his Medicare plan, local pharmacy and even Pfizer to find out whether his wife could stay on Lipitor and what the cost would be. "They didn't know anything," Mr. Allen says.

Adding to the confusion, Pfizer has embarked on an ambitious plan to keep the brand-name drug's sales alive after the advent of generic versions, striking bargains with pharmacy-benefit managers to keep dispensing Lipitor for a time at generic prices and starting up a direct-mail service.

Here are some questions facing Lipitor consumers, and some answers about what the switch to a generic version will mean.

How will I know if I will get Lipitor or the generic?

The generic version will be labeled atorvastatin calcium, the chemical name of Lipitor. Generally, health plans determine which drugs their members receive. Some plans have decided to move immediately to the generic version.

Others have arranged for patients to stay on Lipitor, paying the same price as if it were a generic, for at least the next 180 days—a period during which generic competition is still limited.

A Medicare spokesman declined to comment on what beneficiaries of its prescription drug plan, Part D, might expect.

Drugstore officials say that because of the variation in plans, a pharmacist won't be able to tell patients whether they're getting Lipitor or atorvastatin (uh-tour'-vuh-statin) until they fill their prescriptions at the counter.

Will there be a clinical difference between Lipitor and its generics?

Not a meaningful difference, says John Santa, director of Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center, a research arm of Consumer Reports magazine. The color, shape and some inactive ingredients in the pills might be different, but generics must contain the same key ingredient and prove to be equivalent in order to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Much attention has been given to manufacturing problems at plants run by generic drug makers. But a Consumer Reports analysis found that the FDA was as likely to warn about manufacturing issues at a brand-name drug factory as a generic one, Dr. Santa says. The magazine's analysis also found that, in general, patients report side effects at a similar rate for brand-name drugs as for generic versions.

 Generic Lipitor Goes on Sale This Week: A Users' Guide