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The administration estimated that its proposal would save consumers $3.2 billion in the first year and nearly $35 billion over 10 years — about half the savings estimated by the Congressional Budget Office for the bill passed by the Senate.

The budget office has estimated that the nation will spend $4.7 trillion on prescription drugs in the coming decade. The savings estimated by the administration are less than 1 percent of that amount.

In July, the White House criticized many features of the Senate bill, but was not deeply involved in negotiations on the legislation.

Consumers Union said it was pleased to see the White House acknowledge what consumers have asserted for years: that brand-name drug companies exploited the law to keep generic products off the shelves.

Janell Mayo Duncan, legislative counsel for Consumers Union, said: ”It took the White House two years to address this problem with a proposal offered two weeks before the midterm elections. If the White House is serious about this problem, why did it take so long?”

A senior administration official said the proposal was not an election year ploy, adding, ”We’ve been working on this for well over a year.”

The administration estimated that its proposal would reduce revenues of the brand-name drug industry by $51.5 billion over 10 years.

Jeffrey L. Trewhitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobby for brand-name companies, said his group had ”no advance information or knowledge of the proposal” and had no immediate comment.

Under the proposal, brand-name drug companies could not delay competition by filing patents for incidental features of a product like packaging. But the proposal does not address the agreements under which brand-name drug companies sometimes pay generic companies to keep low-cost generic versions off the market.

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