By Jared S. Hopkins
Updated 2:47 pm, Tuesday, August
15, 2017
Big-name drugmakers want to profit from selling lower-priced
copies of rivals’ expensive biotechnology drugs. Patients and doctors want to
pay less for medicine.
Getting those two sides together is harder than it looks. Part
of the problem: a web of relationships between drug companies and insurers that
shields incumbent drugs and often sidelines upstarts until the market becomes
crowded.
Pfizer said this month that Inflectra, its version of the
blockbuster Johnson & Johnson rheumatoid arthritis drug Remicade, brought
in $94 million in the second quarter. Remicade, a biologic medicine made from
living cells, booked $1.53 billion in sales in the period and had 2016 sales of
$7 billion.
Ascension Health, a nearly 23,000-bed nonprofit hospital system
based in St. Louis, spends $55 million a year on Remicade, more than any other
drug. Using Inflectra, part of a new class of medicines called Biosimilars,
would save it at least $10 million annually, according to Ascension’s chief
pharmacist, Roy Guharoy. He met with Pfizer and planned to integrate Inflectra
into care more often until learning that insurers preferred to stay with
Remicade.
“This we did not expect,” Guharoy said. “If the insurance
companies force us to use the branded product, of course our hands are tied.”
Pfizer says that the playing field is tilted against its drug.
J&J spokeswoman Caroline Pavis said in a statement that
Remicade is sold in a highly competitive market and that health plans decide on
coverage.
Biosimilars have faced a difficult path to market. Doctors and
patients tend to be loyal to innovative drugs that have worked well, payers are
cautious in adopting alternatives, and Biosimilars can’t be swapped at the pharmacy
because they aren’t identical to the drugs they are designed to replace.
Remicade, known as infliximab and approved in the U.S. in 1998
for treating the digestive disorder Crohn’s disease, was cleared for rheumatoid
arthritis a year later. It marked an important improvement for the 1.3 million
patients who suffer from swelling and pain in the joints. By 2008, it was the
top-selling drug in J&J’s pharmaceutical division.
“Most rheumatologists are very happy with the drugs we have. I
wouldn’t switch a patient if they were doing well on infliximab simply for the
economics of it,” said Susan Goodman, rheumatologist at Weill Cornell Medicine
and New York-Presbyterian.
“However, if a patient could only be given Inflectra, that would
be a different argument.”
J&J told analysts on a recent conference call that it has
protected Remicade’s turf by setting up its contracts with payers for the year.
J&J has exclusive contracts in nearly half its market, according to analyst
Ronny Gal of Sanford Bernstein & Co., meaning payers agree to cover only
Remicade for rheumatoid arthritis. J&J also bundled drugs and devices with
hospitals and gave discounts to infusion centers, Gal wrote.
UnitedHealth Group, the largest U.S. insurer, recently told
providers that Remicade remains its preferred drug for coverage. Remicade is
still on next year’s list of preferred medicines at pharmacy-benefit managers
Express Scripts and CVS Caremark.
A Cigna spokeswoman declined to comment. Representatives for
Anthem, Aetna and UnitedHealth Group didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Pfizer began selling Inflectra in November at $946 a vial, a 15
percent discount of Remicade’s then-price of $1,113. But Johnson & Johnson
has retained its pricing power, boosting Remicade’s price to $1,168, a 64 percent
increase since 2011. J&J says discounts and rebates, among other factors,
can lower the drug’s actual sale price.
It has taken time for other biosimilars to gain acceptance. When
Sandoz released white-blood-cell booster Zarxio, the first biosimilar approved
in the U.S., two years ago, it cost 15 percent less than Amgen’s Neupogen.
Since then, Neupogen has gradually lost its dominance, with sales sliding from
$1.4 billion in 2013 to $765 million last year. But another similar drug,
Granix by Teva Pharmaceutical, has been cleared, and Express Scripts last week
became the second pharmacy-benefit manager to exclude Neupogen from its list of
covered medicines.
Remicade faces a similar turning point. Merck and Samsung
Bioepis started selling a Remicade biosimilar this month at a 35 percent
discount to J&J’s medication. Some analysts say that could be enough to
move more sales away from Remicade.
“The moment the second or third comes in, then you have a price
war,” said Pratap Khedkar, a consultant at ZS Associates who studies the
biosimilar market.
Doctors are still waiting for that moment. Jonathan Kay, a
rheumatologist at UMass Memorial Medical Center said he tried to prescribe
Inflectra to a patient last year. He says Inflectra and Remicade are
essentially equivalent and going with a cheaper alternative is the more
“responsible” thing to do.
However, Kay’s hospital found Inflectra cost $25 more than
Remicade a vial, a discrepancy he attributes to pricing negotiations involving
the supply chain.
“That was a hard stop,” he said. “They didn’t go any further.”
Makers of name-brand drugs once opposed biosimilars, citing
safety among other concerns, but now say they have the manufacturing muscle and
experience to produce and distribute the drugs.
“For 20 years, until maybe this year, the brand industry’s
position was, ‘Don’t take a biosimilar, it’s scary, it’s dangerous,’” said
Bruce Leicher, senior vice president and general counsel at Momenta
Pharmaceuticals, which sells generics and is developing Biosimilars. “That’s
what doctors have been told. All of that has to be overcome, and it could take
a year or two until this becomes routine, like generics are a routine
presence.”
Jared S. Hopkins is a Bloomberg writer. Email: jhopkins38@bloomberg.net
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