Rising drug costs are plaguing public and private health insurance plans alike. In response to this trend, British Columbia has extended its program to transition patients to biosimilar drugs, which are cheaper than their reference drugs.
About 1,700 patients who receive the reference biologic drug Remicade to treat Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis are now encouraged to be prescribed one of two biosimilar drugs: Inflectra or Renflexis.
The transition will last six months, until March 5, 2020. After that date, the province will stop providing coverage for Remicade if it is prescribed to treat one of these inflammatory diseases.
A costly drug
Remicade is a very expensive drug. “Since Remicade was first approved for sale by the federal government in 2001, British Columbia has spent more than $671 million to fund it,” BC of Health Minister Adrian Dix explained when he made this announcement.
Transition already underway
Crohn’s disease and colitis patients are not the first populations in BC to be affected by the provincial program intended to promote the use of biosimilars.
In May, British Columbia announced that to receive provincial funding, patients with ankylosing spondylitis, diabetes, plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis would need to switch from reference biologic drugs to biosimilar drugs. This first transition, which affected about 20,700 patients, should end six months after its announcement, namely on Nov. 25.
With the transition to biosimilars, the BC government aims to offer patients treatment “safely and effectively” while achieving savings. “By using biosimilars in B.C., we will be putting about $96.6 million back into health care over the next three years,” says Dix.
A biosimilar and a biologic drug are “highly similar, but not identical,” Health Canada points out, adding that “there are no expected clinically meaningful differences in efficacy and safety between a biosimilar and the biologic drug.” Both are made from living cells, unlike a generic drug and its reference drug, which are made of chemically synthesized molecules.
