No Stupid Questions

They do. However, the drugs your pet needs may not be off patent, and thus you have to buy branded.

A lot of pet meds are people meds and can be filled at regular pharmacies. A lot of pharmacies can get generic versions of your pets meds. You get your vet to call in scripts to the pharmacy, or get a written prescription, a lot of vets are charging fees for online pharmacy interactions, but less than their fill fees, 3$ vs 15$. Fill fee is the base fee no matter what comes next, 5 pills or 500, they'll get that minimum. For Heartworm, and Flea and tick prevention the old standbys exist affordably in Ivermectin and afoxolaner, and are available over the counter. Getting priced out of petship is real. Private equity.. blah bleh blah

There are generic drugs made or prescribed for cats and dogs in my part of the world (USA).

In fact, out of all the meds my pets have been prescribed over the years, most of them have been generic. The majority of the time, it's actually the same medications given to humans (ex: insulin, antibiotics, heart meds, anxiety meds) and some of them I even purchased through a standard pharmacy like Walgreens.

From my experience, the main medications that don't tend to have generics are drugs that are meant for veterinary purpose only. Flea and tick meds are an example. For those, the situation isn't all that much different from human medications. They usually start off getting patented, which gives them the exclusive right to make and sell the active ingredient for some period of time. Eventually, though, that protection expires, and then if it's profitable enough, other manufacturers can make a generic version.

With flea and tick meds specifically, there's been a steady slate of newer / improved products over the years. I remember a time when a product called Frontline was introduced. It was almost revolutionary, just a small bit of product between the shoulder blades kept the fleas away for a month. Then there was a pill that kills fleas in less than 24 hours. Then they made pill/treats with longer lasting products. Then they combined flea and tick with heartworm meds. Now there's an injection that lasts months (or maybe it's a whole year, I can't recall). Each of these is a new product, so it gets patented and then there's only a name brand version for whatever the exclusivity period is.

Maybe it's similar in your country?

They do.....

You just match the active compound and dosage. Then you can buy any generic pet drug. Over here, it's the norm. Pharmacies won't even stock up pet-specific drugs if they have a generic human counterpart. Works just fine.

My pets have always used generic drugs.

Edit-they cost less than the same amount of human drugs too.

We can barely get our government to protect us from medical price gouging and unfair practices. They care even less about a dog or cat than they do about a human being.

hate spend

Hate spending sounds like regular spending but with curse-words and frustrated gestures.

My dog gets several generic drugs including Alaprazolam (xanax) and fluoxtene (Prozac)

Because no one gives a shit about animals. I mean, gives even less of a shit than they do with humans.

Because there's a political interest in keeping health costs down for humans. For animals the market his more "free". With doctors in the family we just had the vet recommend the drug and then bought the human version for our dogs.

I swear we have gotten generics for our dogs for some things but can't recall what.

It depends on the meds. We were doing a synthesized injection drug for my dog's elbow dysplasia and arthritis, and that was a custom, specialized, expensive drug. The alternative to carprofen and gabapentin were cheap though. I think we got them and his allergy meds from Costco. Most expensive dog we ever had.

(non-human) Animals can't vote 😿

(And animal "owners"/guardians do not have enough sway in politics)

Are pet medications still just expired human meds? Or is that an old wives tail?