PARIS, Oct 17 (APM) - The French economic committee for health products (CEPS) has specified the policy it will apply on setting reference prices of biosimilars and their reference drugs, APM learned from its chairman Dominique Giorgi, on Friday.
Several drugs issued from biotechnologies and available in hospitals only will shortly be the subject of competition from biosimilars, starting with Merck Sharp & Dohme’s anti-TNF Remicade (infliximab) of which a biosimilar version (Celltrion/Hospira’s Remsima/Inflectra) was approved in Europe in September 2013.
As it had done in the case of generic versions of cancer drugs, CEPS has decided to set the same reference price for the reference drug and its biosimilars, so that competition will play out in full during the tendering process.
Hospitals recover a part of the margin between the reference price and the price at which they actually buy a drug. Setting a lower tariff for biosimilars would risk inciting hospitals to prefer the reference drug, liable to allow them to access a more substantial margin.
CEPS has decided to lower this reference price by 10% in comparison with its level before the biosimilar arrived on the scene.
In a statement published on Wednesday, IMS reported remarks made by Giorgi during a round table organised by the group that collects pharmaceutical sales data and analyses them, according to which the new rules would apply as of January 2015.
“If competition plays its role over the year, in 2016 we shall revise the tariffs to take that into account,” he added
On pricing biosimilars in the community, CEPS is still thinking matters over, Giorgi told APM on Friday.
In particular, sometime in 2015 the committee will have to deal with the case of the first biosimilar of Sanofi’s Lantus (insulin glargine): Lilly/Boehringer Ingelheim’s Abasria.
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