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WASHINGTON — The Association for Accessible Medicines and its Biosimilars Council today hosted a policy briefing: What’s Truly Preventing Low-Cost Medicines from Getting to Patients: A Look at the Broken Patent System, for Congressional staff regarding ways to expedite patient access to lower-cost generic and biosimilar medicines. The panel of subject matter experts discussed patent policies—including patent thickets, patent settlements and “skinny labeling”—and the potential impacts of proposed reforms on patient costs.
“Strong and timely biosimilar and generic competition has been the most successful method for lowering drug prices in America,” David Gaugh, Interim President and CEO of AAM. “Even though generics and biosimilars offer meaningfully lower prices, these cost savings are too often thwarted by brand patent thickets.”
The panel included Karin Hessler, General Counsel, Association for Accessible Medicines; William M. Jay, Partner, Goodwin Procter LLP; Kurt Karst, Director, Hyman, Phelps & McNamara, P.C.; Neema Kumar, Vice President, Intellectual Property, North America, Sandoz; and Kevin Zive, Vice President, General Counsel and Head of Global Intellectual Property, Apotex Inc.
Also, AAM, ERIC ( The ERISA Industry Committee), and Transparency-Rx sent a letter to Congress calling for passage of legislation to prevent “patent thickets” and reform harmful practices utilized by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that undermine generic and biosimilar adoption.
Last week, AAM and its Biosimilars Council released the 2024 U.S. Generic & Biosimilar Medicines Savings Report, showing savings for the healthcare system and increased patient access to care from biosimilar medicine. Savings for America’s patients and the U.S. healthcare system through use of generic and biosimilar medicines reached $445 billion in 2023.
