"Soft" deception: what tricks are used in pharmacies to sell goods at a higher price

What to do if instead of the medicine prescribed by the doctor, you are offered some other remedy, therapist Alexey Khukhrev told Sputnik radio in an interview.

The desire to help the buyer choose the right product is natural for any good seller. Pharmacy employees are no exception in this regard. But if you came for a medicine that a doctor prescribed to you, and the pharmacist persistently offers you its analogues, then this is most likely a trick that you should not fall for, says therapist Alexey Khukhrev.

"You came to the pharmacy for something specific, but they may try to sell you something else for the promotion and will be offered advice on the choice of drugs. It is clear that it is profitable for a pharmacist to sell either more drugs or a more expensive drug with the same active ingredient", - said Alexey Khukhrev.

The advice of a pharmacist should not be trusted more than the advice of a doctor. This can be dangerous to health, and not only lead to a waste of money, the therapist recalled.

"An ordinary pharmacist in a pharmacy may not know what thoughts the doctor was guided by when prescribing a specific medicine. When a pharmacist offers analogs, he can offer a completely different meaning. I have the following opinion: it is in the patient's interests to take what the doctor ordered", - he stressed Alexey Khukhrev.

An exception may be generic drugs, the doctor believes: "There are direct analogues of the drug you need in terms of chemical composition, they are called generics. To find them, the patient must go to the Internet before going to the pharmacy and see the chemical name of the active ingredient of the drug. and in the country of production everything coincided, then you can".

Generic is an analogue of a medicinal product that contains the same active ingredient and in the same amount as the original. It must have the same international nonproprietary name (INN) as the “reference” drug, but the manufacturer is free to assign a different brand name to its own product.