Molly Burich: How to Improve Biosimilar Uptake

Molly Burich, MS, is the head of public policy at Boehringer Ingelheim.

Transcript:

With all the obstacles to biosimilar competition, where is the work around to other solutions?

There's no question that there's barriers to the uptake of biosimilars. We have reimbursement systems that can have a tendency to incent a higher cost product. So, what we need to see are some efforts at the federal and payer level that will allow some of those misaligned incentives to be removed or adjusted to get the biosimilar market moving. Some of those ideas can include things like shared savings, where you give physicians and patients an opportunity to share some of the savings that are generated from using lower cost products. The administration has the ability in their authority now to implement a shared savings program. We've also seen some congressional activity around increasing ASP [average sales price] add-on for physicians, zero-dollar cost share for patients, Part D Star ratings measures around biosimilars. All of those things are really important to help get the market moving and stimulate the biosimilar market so that we not only have better uptake now, but that we have a long-term robust and sustainable market where we're truly driving down costs.