Generic medicines: Some questions

Sir,

Of late, we are witnessing lot of discussions on generic medicines to be prescribed by doctors. When a drug is prescribed by its generic name, the patient can opt for a cheaper medicine. But do all patients have knowledge of  drugs prescribed by the doctor? It’s a clear NO.  Then the chemist has to suggest a cheaper version of the drug. Now as a layman my questions are:

1. Who is responsible for the treatment? Is it the doctor who prescribes a particular brand / name of the medicine or the chemist who suggests a cheaper version of the medicine  based on the generic name ?
2. When a cheaper substitute of a medicine is used, suppose the patient has not recovered, should the patient go back to the doctor or to the chemist ?
3. Reputed pharma companies invest lot of funds for their research and development and they need to recover their investment. Hence their medicines will generally be costly.
4. A pharma company selling cheaper version of the same drug may not even have a R&D facility. Also their investment would be less than that of a standard pharma company.
5. When a patient can afford to pay a sum of Rs. 150 to Rs. 200 as doctor’s consultation charges, they may not mind buying good quality of medicines, as per the prescription of the doctor.
6. If the government is targeting poor patients, insist all government hospital medical stores to sell generic medicines only.
7. Purchasing medicines should be the prerogative of the patients and prescribing the same is the prerogative of the doctors. Government cannot insist doctors that they should prescribe only generic names.

– K. Chandrahas, Mysuru, 7.6.2017