AbbVie’s Humira Arthritis Drug will be Cheaper for Americans
2023.01.31 08:33
AbbVie’s Humira Arthritis Drug will be Cheaper for Americans
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – This year, patients in the United States will finally have access to cheaper versions of the best-selling arthritis medication Humira from AbbVie Inc. (ABBV.N), but the savings are expected to be limited.
Amgen Inc. (AMGN.O), a rival pharmaceutical company, introduced Amjevita, the first biosimilar version of AbbVie’s 20-year-old drug, on Tuesday with two pricing levels. The monthly cost of Humira, $6,922, is reduced by 5%. The other one may not be widely available, but it will cost about half as much.
The majority of patients are expected to base their co-insurance costs on the higher price, which is typically expressed as a percentage of the list price.
This summer, at least seven additional Humira biosimilars are anticipated to launch with discounted list prices. Even then, pharmacists, doctors, academics, and patient groups claimed that they would be obscured by the middlemen-negotiated private insurance system in the United States and after-market discounts known as rebates.
According to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), insurers and employers benefit from the substantial discounts they receive in order to lower their overall medical costs.
According to Benjamin Rome, a Harvard Medical School researcher who studies drug pricing, the introduction of biosimilars in the United States has not resulted in the anticipated price drop.
Complex, expensive biologic drugs made from living cells cannot be precisely duplicated, in contrast to pills, which have extremely cheap generic versions. Biosimilars are the closest alternatives to them.
According to Rome:
“The bottom line is it’s possible that even if prices for Humira and biosimilars go down, this could be in the form of higher rebates to PBMs rather than actually lower prices that are passed on to patients.”
Drug prices in the United States are among the highest in the world, in part due to the absence of a single government payer by many different private sector businesses.
The government’s Medicare program for people 65 and older will be able to negotiate the prices of its most expensive medicines under the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, but Humira and other drugs with direct competition will not be able to do so.
Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and psoriasis are all treated with Humira, the non-COVID prescription drug with the highest worldwide sales.
For a person whose coinsurance payment is 10% of the list price, a reduction of 5% in the price would translate into a monthly savings of approximately $35.
AbbVie’s patient assistance programs offer substantial discounts to some patients. For its version, Amgen has launched a savings program that is comparable.
In the United States, approximately half a dozen drugs compete with biosimilars. According to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, those’s prices have dropped up to 20%.
Amgen has established two-week supply prices of $1,557 and $3,288 for 40 milligram pen devices. Reuters was informed by Amgen executive Murdo Gordon that the reduced price would attract healthcare systems that serve as both providers and insurers and typically do not seek discounts from the secondary market.
Gordon said:
“If you think of a pharmaceutical benefit manager, they would prefer the high list price because their business model is to extract rebates from manufacturers and pass them on to their employer, customers, or downstream health plan customers.”
OptumRX of UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) and Cigna Corp (CI.N) said last year that they had agreements to make Humira, rivals from Amgen, and others, available under the same access and pricing conditions. Another significant PBM, CVS Health (CVS.N), intends to include the drug on its coverage list but with less favorable terms and as non-preferred.
The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association’s president, JC Scott, stated that PBMs oppose drugmakers’ requests for delays and want more competition in the prescription drug market.
He stated:
“The bottom line is that the most effective and sustainable way to drive down the cost of prescription drugs is to increase competition.”
In November 2018, a month after Humira’s patent expired, Reuters reported that AbbVie offered discounts of up to 80% in Europe, where governments negotiate drug prices.
AbbVie continued to be protected in the United States by additional patents, and the company made arrangements with Amgen and others to permit competing drugs in exchange for royalty payments.
AbbVie didn’t say anything.
The National Community Pharmacists Association’s chief executive, Douglas Hoey, predicted that when new competition enters the market in July, prices for drugs of this kind in the United States would drop by 15 to 20 percent.
However, Global Healthy Living Foundation’s chief science policy officer Robert Popovian stated that list prices would only come down with additional public and market pressure following the summer entries.
Humira sales are expected to fall as a result of biosimilar competition, according to analysts. According to Refinitiv, they anticipate sales of $21.2 billion in 2022, which will decrease to $13.4 billion this year and $8.3 billion in 2024. Sales of Amgen’s biosimilar are anticipated to reach $933.8 million in 2024 and $747.6 million in 2023, according to analysts.
A rheumatologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center named Marcus Snow stated that he would prescribe adalimumab, which is the chemical name for Humira, depending on the cost and the terms of each patient’s insurance policy.
He stated that, all things considered, he would continue to prescribe Humira to existing patients and make an effort to prescribe new patients the medication that was most likely to be given preference on formularies in the future in order to avoid switching.
According to Snow, “I wouldn’t expect to see the price changes that we all hope to have in the first year.”
