…details in the implementation will matter, also. Competition always drives costs to a level approaching the cost of production, and that’s to the good, not only of consumers but for competitors and others looking to enter the market, as well.
However.
On Monday, [Congresswoman and MD Mariannette (R, IA)] Miller-Meeks along with three of her colleagues introduced a bill titled the “Biologics Competition Act,” which seeks “to evaluate the process by which interchangeable biological products are approved to be used in pharmaceuticals.”
“So in essence, what we’re trying to get is biosimilar drugs that are the same chemically—that they have an equivalency to let those be prescribed as generic drugs, which would bring down the cost of medication[.]”
There’s a reason generics, in general, are delayed in getting authorization to be marketed: to allow the drug’s initial developer(s) time to recoup the costs of development and to begin realizing profit, and thereby encourage further drug development.
Such permission delays would need to apply to the biosimilar drugs, too. With a fillip: defining how much change is necessary while remaining biosimilar without leaving the required change so trivial that the new drug is an outright plagiary with only a token item grafted on.
That may well be the eye of a needle—passable, but with difficulty, especially when trying to write down a specific law. Worth going for, though, absolutely.
