I think you are looking at the cost of generic prescription drugs vs their generic OTC counterpart. Of course. Drugs that are approved for OTC are almost alwa

I think you are looking at the cost of generic prescription drugs vs their generic OTC counterpart. Of course. Drugs that are approved for OTC are almost always generic by that time. Most often drug companies look to get approval as prescription, because that is more profitable for patented drugs. No, it's not approved as prescription because it's more profitable, it's approved as prescription because that's all the FDA allows. The safety requirements for OTC are far stricter than prescription. Most patented drugs could never become OTC, ever. In the case of Norgestrel it took until now before any drug maker thought it would be worth pursuing. Norgestrel is a generic. All birth control pills pretty much are. The hormones can be in different combinations or formulations, but generally they are all generic components. So my point stands, it's often more profitable to be OTC than prescription.