The Government has repeated its plea to doctors to save the NHS millions in the coming year by prescribing cheaper drugs.

Figures show that the NHS could save £85 million a year if GPs prescribed cheaper cholesterol-busting statins.

Costings from the Department of Health reveal that a 28-day course of generic statins cost between £1.89 and £4.57, with the top end course being £26.42.

Meanwhile, branded alternatives cost between £18.03 and £29.69 for a 28-day course.

The Department said statin prescribing had increased by over 150% in the last five years and costs the NHS around £600m in 2005.

If every primary care trust prescribed two generic statins, pravastatin and simvastatin, in 69% of all cases, then more than £84.7m a year could be saved, it said.

In June, doctors argued that the NHS could save more than £2 billion over the next five years if doctors switched to cheaper statins.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they noted that the new guidelines recommend that 5.2 million (14% of the adult population) should be taking statins - which will cost an extra £250 million a year.

They said using simvastatin for the 1.6 million new prescriptions would save £950 million over five years.

Also, switching the one million patients currently on branded atorvastatin to simvastatin "should have no effect on health" and would save an extra £1.1 billion over the next five years, they added.

Guardian.co.uk

So, doesn`t logic dictate that the Government would force doctors to prescribe generic drugs only, rather than allowing them to prescribe the much higher costs drugs?