PRESCRIBING GENERICS -why not make it mandatory?

When a patient visits a doctor, the patient rightly presumes that the 'doctor will look after my best interests' and this behooves the doctor's ensuring that, the patient not only gets the best therapeutic outcome feasible, but gets a standard medicinal product (s) that meets all purity and efficacy parameters at the least price payable

- Anirban Biswas

The second duty of the doctor acquires much more significance in a country like India as most patients have monetary constraints and a huge subset of patients are not covered by medical insurance. So most patients have to pay for the price of the medicines from their own pockets curtailing other equally (if not, more) important necessities. Even if some insurance company pays for the patient’s medication , then too it is incumbent on the doctor to safeguard the insurance company’s interests as well. The medical industry works on trust, and even when an insurance company reimburses a patient’s medicine costs, it does so on the assumption that the doctor has not sacrificed the insurance company’s interest and has prescribed the most effective drug(s) at the cheapest price available.