How Will Payers Manage Multiple Adalimumab Biosimilars? Jeffrey Casberg Explains

Jeffrey Casberg, vice president of pharmacy at IPD Analytics, discussed the different options that payers have to manage the growing number of biosimilars referencing Humira (adalimumab) that are expected to enter the market in 2023 and beyond.

Transcript

How do you think payers are going to manage having so many adalimumab biosimilars to choose from?

Casberg: That's what we do as a company: we help people make formulary and drug management decisions. So, I see there's 3 options. As a payer, you can stay with AbbVie’s [product] all the way, which avoids member disruption and makes things more smooth but you don't get biosimilar adoption. And from an optics perspective, I think adoption of biosimilars is becoming more required these days.

So, one option is AbbVie, all in. You may not get quite as much savings as going with biosimilars, but you also now don’t have some of the hurdles and hassles you get with going with biosimilars.

Number 2 is going middle of the road. Keep Humira [reference adalimumab] on formulary, but also add some biosimilars at parity. So, have both options available. It allows you to maintain some Humira rebate and also allows you to take advantage of some biosimilars savings. So that's option 2, kind of meeting halfway.

And then the last one is biosimilars, all in. Take [Humira] off formulary and go all in with biosimilars. Try to convert as much of the market share as you can.

So, those are the strategies, and as far as all those different options you probably add the [originator], and/or 1 or 2 of the biosimilars, and then see how the cards fall.