Instead, Lilly decided to come out with a new offering, a so-called authorized generic. This type of product is made by or under an agreement from the brand manufacturer. The medicines are exactly the same as the brand-name drug — often made in the same factory with the same equipment to the same formula. Only the name and the packaging are different.

It is perhaps, a sign of how desperate Americans are for something — anything — to counteract the escalating price of drugs that Lilly’s move was greeted with praise rather than a collective “Huh?”

Imagine if Apple sold a $500 iPhone for $250 if it was called, say, a yPhone, and simply lacked the elaborate white box and the little Apple on back. That would be patently absurd. An iPhone in a brown paper bag is still an iPhone. And Humalog with a new name isn’t a generic — except according to the bizarre logic of the pharmaceutical industry. Like so many parts of our health care system, its existence has more to do with convoluted business arrangements than health.

Generics, as traditionally understood, are copies of brand name drugs made by competing manufacturers once the original patent protection has expired. To be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, they have to have the same active chemical ingredients as the brand drug, and be absorbed equally into the blood, though they could look different and contain different inactive additives.

Historically and in practice they tend also to be far cheaper, because the advent of generics often introduces robust competition into the market. That is why brand manufacturers sometimes produce an authorized generic once they lose patent protection. That way, they can compete at the lower price point, while preserving the original for those with extreme label loyalty.