Biosimilars represent an opportunity to significantly reduce government health care costs and benefit patients, the healthcare system, and society. In this video, Cheryl Koehn, Founder and President of Arthritis Consumer Experts, looks at some of these benefits, including:

• Savings from biosimilars can streamline "special access criteria." Currently, patients must try and fail treatment on older, less expensive medications. Because biosimilars are significantly less expensive, public and private drug plans can remove the need for patients to fail on some of these older therapies before approving reimbursement for a biologic.
• Savings generated from biosimilars transition policy implementation could be reinvested into public drug plan budgets, making it possible to add new medications coming into the marketplace, and by doing so, expanding patient medication choice and improving outcomes for more patients, not just the privileged with current coverage.
• Savings from biosimilars could be invested into non-medication types of care that patients need, such as specialized nursing, counselling, physio- and occupational therapy, among other important elements of a holistic inflammatory arthritis treatment plan.

To learn more about the benefits of biosimilars, please click on the video.