Orange Book

Categories: Econ

Nope, not the black one...that’s private. No, the blue one is about cars...ah, there we go, the orange one. (

The Orange Book, more formally known as the Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations, lists the FDA-approved drugs in the U.S. You can think of the Orange Book as the official "proven safe and effective" list of drugs.

The Orange Book is updated on the reg, and is a free, online resource for doctors, patients, and anyone else who may be looking for generic equivalents or what’s available. Patents also end up in the Orange Book, since generic drug firms are only allowed to start producing generic versions once the original version’s patent is expired.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is running things over in the U.S. with its Orange Book, it works a bit differently in Europe. Since many European countries are the ones financing the drugs, each drug has to be negotiated with a country’s healthcare market before it reaches the public. Plus, Europe is known to have banned many things that are widely used in America, like food products, farm animal drugs, and people drugs. So the U.S. Orange Book might be a bit fatter than its European counterpart. Just like the people.

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