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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RWReeves who wrote (3762)	10/12/1999 9:29:00 AM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10280

But will Healthcare pay for it? A very good question. They do now pay for the very expensive PPI inhibitors like Prilosec over the now generic H2 blockers like ranitidine (Zantac), but that's because the PPI inhibitors work much better, and the alternative may be expensive surgery. Whether they will pay existing steep PPI prices for a 15% improvement once generic Prilosec hits the market I actually rather doubt. My guess is that the "somewhat" improved drugs will still face tough competition from generics, but will be able to hold a somewhat bigger market share and somewhat higher prices than would the original brand name drug. Anyone have any figures for what percentage of original sales a brand name drug like Zantac maintains once generics are introduced? Between price erosion, loss of market share and the offset of a bigger unit market, I'd take a wild guess at around 40%. If the somewhat improved drugs can hold this to 50% (I'm being conservative here), that's worth a billion dollars in the worldwide PPI market. Peter