What Is The Best Generic Version Of Wellbutrin Xl - Watson Or Anchen? (Page 29)

My doctor will not prescribe generic Wellbutrin XL but my insurance will no longer pay for brand name drugs. I will have to pay about $7000 per yer for what I am taking now (3 of the 150mg Wellbutrin XL brand name per day). I am reading that the problem with the generics is the time release mechanism and not the drug itself and that some are better than others. Anybody have experience with the generics made by Watson and /or Anchen?

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Like everyone on this forum I'm suffering with bad generic bupropion XL. I wonder if Geminiguy isn't on to something. The FDA is actually making it impossible for us to have relief at an even half way reasonable price. I wonder if a petition effort would have any effect. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the FDA would declare there is no equivalent to brand Wellbutrin XL thereby forcing the issue. Those petitions can be pretty powerful.

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I don't know if this helps anyone, but I'm have state insurence and it only wanted covered generics. I talked to my doc and told him I was having too many side effects and wanted to try the brand name because it seems to cause people to have a lot less side effects. I had to get a form from my pharmacy sent to my doc,( I think it's called an approval form but I'm sure if you explain it to the pharmacy they'll know what form it is) the doc had to write that the name brand was " medically necessary ", and had to fax it to the insurance company. A few days later the pharmacy got the " OK " for the name brand to be covered. I've now been on the name brand for about 12 days and have had few side effects. I hope this helps anyone who is having trouble getting the insurance to cover the name brand. I think it's worth a try to be approved because the price is a big difference when the insurance covers it. Which I'm sure most of you know.

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Before we go all paranoid on this, remember what generics are SUPPOSED to be...

In the first years after a drug is developed, the patent holder has exclusive rights to sell it an charge whatever the market will bear with no competition. A new drug costs between $1 billion and $2 billion, and all of the research, development and FDA approval costs have to be paid for during the patent period. A billion dollars is a HUGE amount of money -- if there are 100,000 people who need the drug, then each one -- or more precisely their insurance companies -- needs to come up with $10,000-$20,000 for the drug company to break even.

Then the patent runs out, and anybody can make the drug. So the FDA has set up the generic system so that new manufacturers of these drugs can go into business making the drug, and make it so that it is the same. But the "THE SAME" part of this is vitally important -- if they are NOT the same then this NEW drug needs to be extensively analyzed for safety and efficacy. And that's something that costs on the order of a billion dollars -- NOT going to be paid for by the dime-a-day prescription program!

The financials of this system work as a pipeline. At the beginning, you have a disease or condition that has no treatment, at any price. Then a treatment is discovered, developed and given a trial. Then it is released, and it is very expensive for a few years. Then the patent runs out, and it becomes very cheap. The way that it can be paid for is that a big group of people pays IN to the insurance premium pool. MOST of those people don't need any drugs, or only need cheap (patent expired) drugs. So there is money to pay a LOT for the FEW people who need the in-patent drugs. Drugs move through the pipeline, but patients move through the pipeline, too. You may be lucky to develop a disease after some great treatments are out of patent and virtually free, and then your insurance premiums go to pay for people in other parts of the pipeline. Or you may be on them for a few years when they are expensive and then later when they are cheap. Understand, though, that without a way to PAY FOR new drugs there won't BE any new drugs. Well, with the exception of things that effect hundreds of millions of people, so that a billion dollars can be spread around and be a little bit of money from each person. In other words, without SOME way to pay for these huge development costs, there would be no drugs for anything other than baldness cures and impotence cures!

With most drugs, the generic REALLY IS the same. With most drugs, it's really important to force people to take the generic, or if they want to take the expired-patent brand, they need to pay for it with their own money and not use any of the insurance premium pool which is needed to pay for new drugs. Now we come to the problem of Wellbutrin. The problem with Wellbutrin is that the time-release mechanism is an important part of how the drug works, and the time-release mechanism of the patented drug and each of the generics is a trade secret to the individual manufacturer rather than part of the patent that was copied. So each generic version of the drug is a new and different medication which is being taken by millions of people with no trials for safety and efficacy. And they aren't even using us millions of people as guinea pigs -- they are not COLLECTING ANY DATA in any scientific way. It's completely possible that one or more of the generics is MORE EFFECTIVE than the original and/or SAFER than the original. It's NOT a matter of the FDA allowing inferior drugs on the market, it's that the FDA is allowing drugs on the market and they have NO IDEA about how well they work or how safe they are.

Given our collective experience with the various Wellbutrin generics, it is completely reasonable to expect that there are particular people for whom the "real" Wellbutrin doesn't work while one or another of the generics works great for them. Looking at this new program, it looks like a new owner of the expired patent process is deciding to try to market the drug at a price point which is a premium to the generic but still affordable to mere mortals. (And they would make their profits on volume.) What SHOULD happen, if our theories about different people being affected differently, is that if we have a large number of people moving from generics to the real Wellbutrin when those people have never taken real stuff before, is that we should see some folks popping up who did better on one of the generics that has been forced off the market because it is different than they do on the real Wellbutrin. Precisely because it IS different!

Which will be an interesting dilemma... The FDA has accidentally let out a bunch of untried drugs, and some folks have accidentally discovered that they really need them. And there is no source of money that can give trial to any of these drugs for safety and efficacy...

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Better for the FDA to come clean and admit their mistake instead of continuing the façade, digging themselves a deeper hole and losing all their credibility. IMHO.

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To be honest, if I am one of those people for whom the real Wellbutrin doesn't work while one of the generics does, I don't give a flying fig about the credibility of the FDA, or what they are lying about or telling the truth about. I want access to the drug that works FOR ME!

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What happened to the Mylan generic 300 xl? I was told it was no longer available at Walgreens Saturday. I know the oval 142 version does not work for me. Currently trying the Par A101 generic.

I can't find anything about the disappearance of the Mylan version anywhere.

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CF, you really ought to think twice about your dismissal of the importance and the power of the FDA. Through their failure to properly regulate generic equivalents of formula drugs, they have quite literally destroyed the lives of a great many people. Yes, we all want drugs that work for our own bodies....but we can't dismiss the needs of the rest of the population. The FDA has done just that in their refusal to be more rigorous in their trials with generics.

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Mylan 300 xl has disappeared from my pharmacy as well. And I called every other drugstore... Everyone says it's on "back order" and they have no idea if or when they will be getting it in. My last refill was a different generic brand: Activis. I was on it for 8 days and had a HORRIBLE reaction. Very scary. Please let me know how you do on the Par brand. My dr found 11 ... That's right, just 11! - Mylar 150 xl so I've been taking them and after 4 days have finally stabilized somewhat. have an appt next week to discuss options but I'm very concerned because of the reaction I had to the Activis brand. Again, please let me know how the Par brand works for you !

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Jessjustjess I just noticed you said the oval 142 didn't work for you.... That's the Activis brand and that's what they switched me to as well . It didn't work for me either to say the least. I just crashed on it. I have also been on Mylar 300 xl for years and it's been wonderful.

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My husband experienced the same problem, I called the manufacturer and they will have it back on the market within 2 weeks. They switched plants or manufacturing process to meet increased demand. Yay!

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Kathleen, I'm not dismissing either the importance or the power of the FDA -- in fact, I think we don't really disagree. I'm dismissing geminiguy's demand for an admission of wrongdoing from the FDA.

The FDA is trying the best that they can to implement the system that we have, where new drugs go through very extensive -- and expensive! -- diagnostics for safety and efficacy, but with drugs that have already been analyzed, the patients (and their insurance) don't have to pay billions of dollars over and over and over again to examine drugs where the only difference is that they have a different code stamped on the pill, or new art on the label.

There are thousands of incredibly valuable life-saving/life-improving drugs out there which have gone generic without any hitches, and are now available around the world to people for just pennies a day. Some of those have even had time-release mechanisms, and that the different generics have different mechanisms hasn't mattered because with those drugs the time release is more convenience than function. These drugs originally cost trillions of dollars to discover, develop and analyze, but now the R&D is paid for and they can be sold for the few pennies it cost to manufacture them.

If you read the FDA's responses to the problems with Wellbutrin generics -- and reports started right away -- it seems pretty clear that they have worked in good faith, but simply did not understand or appreciate how this little detail matters with this particular drug. It's not an easy problem -- there IS a placebo effect and there ARE people out there who will convince themselves that they feel better on a drug that costs more simply because it costs more. And with psychiatric drugs it's even harder -- we are dealing with diseases that really ARE "all in our heads"! Pretty much everybody who has been here talking about different responses to generics has also said that it took us a while to figure out what was going on, and we are the ones who are in the heads where it is going on!

The law says that generics have to be the same as the brand-name that it is generic for, and in 2005 the FDA let the generic companies go into production and sell the drugs because they thought that they were. Now here we are in 2014 and they know that it's not quite true, and the question is "where do we go from here?" Focusing on FDA "lies" from a decade ago is a lot worse than pointless, because if the FDA is browbeaten into declaring all of the generic Wellbutrins as non-equivalent and forcing them off of the market, there are going to be millions of people -- who were doing great on a generic at $30/mo -- who will be forced to choose between the $400/mo brand name or buying groceries and paying rent.

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"Now here we are in 2014 and they know that its not quite true, and the question is "where do we go from here?"

So what is the FDA's answer to the question "Where do we go from here?"? And if the FDA is still in the process of formulating an answer, what is their expected timeline for answering the question "Where do we go from here"? If the FDA doesn't answer the question "Where do we go from here?" in a timely manner, regardless of whether the answer is good, bad or ugly, then the credibility of the FDA is lost.

Haven't seen my pdoc in about four years, but at the time she said that the placebo effect occurs in approximately four out of ten people. That leaves six out of ten people that the placebo effect doesn't occur in.

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Why don't we start a petition on change.org? There's obviously enough people just from this site that would probably sign it!

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That explains a lot Mindy. I am Canadian and I have been puzzled by the crazy prices people are posting for Welbutrin. I have pretty severe ADD and I'm not really sure what I pay, but I am sure I would remember if I had to pay $300/month or more. Well, I would remember telling them to forget it and going home empty handed, since I could never afford that much.

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cf, All that may be true. But let's not forget that drug companies make billions and billions and billions of dollars in profits every year. They also spend far more on marketing than they do on research and development, and give R&D priority to medications they know they will sell a lot of and make more profit on.

Everyone should have the right to choose whether they want brand name or generic. Especially in cases where the generic is not equivalent to the brand name, which happens more than you think. People only think they are the same because that is what they are told. There is a reason why they are cheaper. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

who.int/trade/glossary/story073/en

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An Update:

I posted awhile ago about being switched to Mylan-Bupropion XL 300 mg and having a bad reaction- severe headaches, nausea, vomiting.

I have since started taking it again and the side effects are not as bad now, with only mild to moderate nausea which usually only lasts for an hour or so after taking it in the morning, with some indigestion throughout the day and an occasional headache.

As for efficacy, I think it's alright, except that it feels like it's too much sometimes, like I'm over stimulated. But I can't tell for sure because I also take Vyvanse for ADHD and it was increased at the same time I was switched to the generic, so I don't know which is responsible for over stimulating me.

Anyway, when I told my doctor about it he was not happy. He doesn't believe the generic is good and he wants me on the brand name for consistency, especially while I am still titrating my Vyvanse. So he gave me a new prescription and a card that will allow me to get the brand name for the generic price. I forgot to get him to put "No Substitutions" on it though so they will probably try it again, since what I want doesn't seem to matter to them.

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I think this thread is great and I've been following it for a bit. I'd appreciate some input on my situation with generic/name brand Wellbutrin. I initially took the PAR (formerly Anchen) generic version - 300XL. I felt the effects literally the first afternoon - euphoric, energetic, productive. I felt like the dark cloud, the heaviness of everything, had lifted. For the next three days, I bounced out of bed hours before I usually did, raced to the gym, got to work early....I could not get enough work done. It brought me so much satisfaction. I had amazing conversations with friends and family. I was grinning ear to ear and just appreciating everything - traffic on the way to work, a tree-lined street, a song on the radio - like never before. I had only felt like this a couple different times in my life (non-medication related). I really felt like I had turned a corner.

Then, at the end of day 4, I felt a very sudden decline. I was out with some friends bowling, and out of the blue it just felt like it was over. And it was. I figured things were just leveling off....sooner than I'd hoped, but I kept with it. The next two weeks were bad though - I felt very spacey, I had little to no energy. It was difficult to work and I was miserable. I know part of it was being so high, then plummeting back down so quickly. I had been hoping for at least a few weeks/months of real relief, not four days. But I knew I needed to be patient. I did, however, start reading up on the internet, on this thread and others, about the inconsistencies of generics. I found the Direct Success Pharmacy offer for $0-$50 for namebrand, and I decided to take advantage of it.

I went off the generic for about a week while I was waiting for my new prescription and the name band med to arrive. (I rushed it. And I can't say enough good things about Direct Success's program - great customer service and it wound up being free vs. $234 at CVS - which is why I'd opted for the generic at $5 initially.)

I've been on the namebrand for 2.5 weeks now. I don't feel cloudy or awful like I was with the PAR generic after the initial 4 days. But I'm not feeling much of anything positive either. I'm trying to keep a very open mind and to be a patient patient. I know it can take 3-6 weeks and even up to a few months to feel the full effects. But my question: is it weird that I felt that honeymoon phase on the generic for only 4 days? And that I haven't felt much of anything on the namebrand in a couple weeks? I plan to give the namebrand a long time to work because I have heard such good things about it, and I've never had luck with SSRIs. Am I metabolizing it quickly? Would I potentially benefit from trying a different generic (Mylar maybe, which a lot here seem to like) if the namebrand isn't doing the trick?

Definitely appreciate your comments. Thanks all.

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After much thought and a month on brand Wellbutrin I honestly can't say if I'm going back on brand via Direct Success for $50 per month or back to Anchen for$7 per month but I paid $331 this last month through Medicare which has the worst plans ever but that's my opinion on them because I knew no better and I hadn't heard of direct Success until this forum a few weeks ago. I actually felt Anchen was great and so much better than the Activas I was on for years but I didn't know any better. Here's my thoughts.

Brand- very powerful and speedy. You get a second wind at about 6 hours and it can take you through to the early morning hours full of energy when I should be sleeping.

Anchen- I honestly felt similar to brand but less intense. I honestly thought at the time this was right for me and the one I was staying on.

Activas was like taking nothing to me. I didn't feel lousy but felt no effects that made me feel like it was helping in any way. I am bi polar, ADD, riddled with anxiety and a former self medicating individual. I want to stay on brand because I know that I'm on a drug where Anchen made me well and everything else was like nothing. I love being Manic and Brand brings me closer to that and I know this is no reason to logically take a particular brand but Manic beats the flip side everytime. I also know with brand what I'll be getting where with generics it's a hit or miss every month.. I have a few more days to ponder this. If I tell my shrink he'll raise my Prozac to 40 mg and there goes my libido out the window. I guess to each his own!

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The reason why Canadians don't pay a high price for Wellbutrin is because they are being de facto subsidized by Americans who are. The Canadian government negotiates drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. The American government does not. To make up for their profit losses with Canadians, the pharmaceutical companies stick it to Americans with higher drug prices. Nothing wrong with the pharmaceutical companies doing this. If they are able to buy off the American government, it's simply business and part of the free enterprise system. For some reason, they are unable to buy off the Canadian government.

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From your symptoms as you describe them, it sounds like you might be either cyclothymic or bipolar. I'd say closer to being cyclothymic. Been there and done both. If you are, it has nothing to do with medication other than the medication triggering your mood state one way or another. My advice would be to totally forget (for the time) about medication being the cause of your problems. I'd go to a pdoc, describe your symptoms, let the pdoc make a diagnosis, and go from there.

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