How does the introduction of biosimilars impact drug prices?

That is the question I answer with my co-authors Ervant J. Maksabedian Hernandez, Marlon Graf, and Alexandria Portelli. The key finding is that at the molecule level, prices fall by only 18.6%, but this masks significant heterogeneity as the uptake of biosimilars varied dramatically across therapeutic class. The results from the paper’s abstract is below.

Changes in average molecule prices were associated largely with biosimilar uptake. For molecules with relatively high biosimilar uptake (>60%) prices fell considerably (-21.2% to -59.3%) 1 year after exclusivity milestones, while molecules with lower biosimilar uptake (<10%) experienced smaller price decreases (-2.4% to -8.4%). Average price reduction at the molecule level after biosimilar entry was not significant (-18.6%; P = 0.657). When applying the RDD results after adalimumab’s exclusivity milestones, its projected share of total TIM market expenditures decreased from 48.0% in 2019 to 26.0% in 2025, while expenditures on Janus kinase inhibitors increased from 4.0% to 34.0%.

You can read the full article here.