By some estimates, about 90% of all prescriptions in the United States are filled with generic drugs.

Insurance companies encourage their use over brand-name medications to reduce health care costs.

The Food and Drug Administration says that all agency-approved generic drugs have the same high-quality, strength, purity, and stability as brand name drugs.

But a ProPublica investigation found that the FDA rarely test the quality of generic drugs, many of them manufactured overseas.

National reporter Debbie Zinziper of ProPublica was one of the authors of that investigation.

Debbie, the FDA doesn't test these drugs, but you independently tested some of the most

widely used generic drugs. What did you find? Yeah, we did because the FDA isn't regularly

testing drugs. And what we found in this testing is that there were certain versions of

widely prescribed generic drugs that had

concerning results because they didn't dissolve properly in the body.

Have patients or other people expressed concerns about this in the past?

Absolutely.

And it's one of the reasons we did the testing in the first place.

And that is because doctors,

pharmacists, consumers, academic researchers, even the Department of Defense, has raised

concerns about the quality of some of our generic drugs. And despite all of that, the FDA

does not have a regular testing program. The agency doesn't regularly test

for quality and safety issues. Do they do that with brand name medications? No, I mean, the FDA

publicly reports the names of the drugs that they test, including brand name drugs and over-the-counter

drugs. But there's no regular testing program. They say they test, including brand name drugs and over-the-counter drugs. But there's no regular

testing program. They say they test based on risk. But what we found is that they're not

regularly testing drugs coming in from some of the most troubled factories overseas.

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