How Have Manufacturers Responded to the Emergence of Biosimilars?

“It really depends on who you’re manufacturing for, right. So, if you’re a biologic you may be a little skeptical because you don’t want something that’s pushing down your price. Right now you’ve got Medicare Part B, and the way that they reimburse is that they get the biologic one reimbursement metric, and then they get the biosimilar another reimbursement metric. So even if you have another biosimilar that comes in after the first one, they start to lower because of the competitive pricing, whereas the biologic still remains its price.

So, we’re going to figure out how that works. I know a couple of people are thinking maybe we should just put them together and have the same code, so I know manufacturers are watching that very closely, at least the biologics, the innovator products. If you’re a biosimilar, you’re really hoping that policy continues to evolve or people start to prescribe it, and obviously you have the system built in with specialty pharmacy, because they to know law in order to get that to their patients. Again it depends on what aspect you’re talking about, but I think from both perspectives it’s exciting, because if biosimilars do catch on, which I believe they do, you may see some more aggressive moves by manufacturers, not only on the litigation side, but also on the acquisition side, and I think that’s going to be important.