The Biosimilars Council, alongside the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM), released its 2024 U.S. Generic & Biosimilar Medicines Savings Report—highlighting the promise of these lower cost medicines for patients while also underscoring the extreme fragility of this vital industry.
In 2023, savings from the use of biosimilars increased by more than 30 percent from the previous year, to $12.4 billion. And since their entry to market in 2015, biosimilars have generated $36 billion in savings for America’s patients and the U.S. healthcare system.
Challenges to biosimilar adoption, combined with the cost of development, are why more than 80 percent of brand biologics that are eligible for competition do not have biosimilars in development,
said Craig Burton, Executive Director the Biosimilars Council. This should serve as a wakeup call to policymakers. Without rapid action to streamline the FDA approval process, reduce abusive patent thickets, mitigate the unintended consequences of government price setting, and remove the perverse incentives of PBM and brand drug rebates, patients will not realize the full value of biosimilars.
