Prescription Drugs--Same Drug, Different Pill

Same drug, different patent: Anyone who watches television—where the majority of the drug industry's $2.5 billion [that figure is now $20+ billion in 2007] a-year-and-growing advertising budget is spent—has seen commercials for AstraZeneca's acid-reflux drug Nexium®. The ad money worked: Consumers spent $458 million on Nexium, at an average cost of $117 per prescription in 2001, the first year it was introduced......