No idea? Well, UK drugmakers have begun a legal challenge to the government’s National Health Service, which wants to switch large numbers of patients to cheap generics. “The NHS could potentially save 84 million pounds ($169.5 million) if it switched to low cost generic statins,” a department spokesman tells Reuters.

But the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry believes this is potentially unsafe and primary care docs are receiving additional payments to prescribe certain low-cost meds in contravention of European law.

“For some time the ABPI has had serious concerns about a number of initiatives at primary care organization level, especially those that provide incentives for switching large numbers of patients to alternative treatments with the sole aim of reducing costs and with inadequate patient safeguards,” the group says in a statement.

‘It is important that individual patients are not neglected in a drive to save money,” an ABPI spokesman tells Reuters. “We don’t think it’s right that doctors’ prescribing decisions are based on how much money they get.”

This is truly a switch: a pharma trade group saying docs should prescribe meds free from the influence of money and other incentives. Hmm…. That’s a remarkable statement. Do you think that should apply to brand-name meds, too? Or is this new insight merely a convenient legal strategy? Imagine if everyone took the ABPI seriously.

Hat tip to PharmaGossip