Tesh Khullar: Reimbursement for Biosimilars

Tesh Khullar, senior vice president and advisor, Flatiron Health, discusses challenges with reimbursement for biosimilars in community oncology practices.

Transcript

We're seeing, and Amgen was the first one to do it, where they went right to the payer. They went to UnitedHealthcare and made sure that their not only branded Neulasta but their biosimilars are on preferred therapy for UnitedHealthcare, which then dictated down to practices needing to utilize it for United Healthcare patients.

So what you're going to see, in our opinion, are biosimilar manufacturers going to payers, getting them on formulary. It's actually going to be a big problem for community oncology. From a financial perspective, it's going to be an opportunity, but the logistical problems of having the brand of biosimilar different by payer is going to be an operational nightmare to manage.