April 1, 2011 
I’m sharing a few quotes from the recent Drug Benefits News on generics here:
“Despite the fact that generics use has long been mainstream, a recent survey we conducted found nearly one-third of Americans still do not know or believe that generics have the same active ingredients and effectiveness as brand name drugs,” Brian Solow, M.D., senior medical director for clinical services at Prescription Solutions, the PBM subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group
It would be interesting to look at that data based on age, gender, number of prescriptions used, physician, geography, and several other factors. That 1/3rd is similar to what I’ve seen in terms of skeptical physicians which would then make a lot of sense as patients of those physicians would be skeptical of generics.
“We are advocating an increase in the differential between generic and brand name copays,” David Lassen, Chief Clinical Officer at Prime Therapeutics LLC says. “Right now the average differential between Tier 1 generics and Tier 2 preferred brands is about $15. We think this difference should be bigger. We’ve seen research suggesting consumers need to save an average of $25 in order to select a generic over a brand name drug.”
An interesting point on copay differentials that a friend of mine recently made is what is the actual differential after grandfathering and formulary overrides which happen.
Enabling Healthy Decisions 
Excellent observation regarding how 1/3 of Doctors view generics. In 2006 area Pharmacist did an Adherence Initiative report to discover why patients were not properly taking their medications. Though there was no one reason for non-adherence, doctors were definitely part of the problem. When we reported to some doctors that patients were not picking up medications because DAWs and/or brand prescriptions co-pays were too expensive, many doctors still would not change to generics, basically stating that is was better not to pick up the brand name products than to pick up and take generic medications.
If this was because of financial incentives to dispense brand or a true believe by doctor would be an interesting study.