Economics
What’s Harder Than Making Copycat Biotech Drugs? Selling Them
- Payer pacts, wary patients vex the market for biosimilar drugs
- Pfizer’s recent sales of Inflectra latest example of challenge
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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.