Oregon Advocate Anna Meyer speaks on an interview for KODL for Biosimilars

Would you want your pharmacist to tell you and your doctor if they substituted your biologic medication with a similar, but not identical drug? Of course you would. But as biosimilars — a less expensive mimic of Biologics — are introduced on the U.S. market, individual states are deciding how and when they can be […]

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Without the medicine Rachelle Crow takes for her rheumatoid arthritis, the 29-year-old Michigan woman’s face would frequently feel as if it were engulfed in flames. She would barely be able to crawl out of bed. She would have trouble opening or closing her fists or lifting her 3-year-old daughter. Crow can do all those things […]

Julie Wiles of Spring says she found relief from rheumatoid arthritis when she began receiving injections of Enbrel, a drug that costs $2,500 a week. But even with insurance coverage, Wiles can no longer afford Enbrel. Instead, she takes a combination of less expensive drugs and injections that hasn’t been nearly as effective.   Read […]

Mariah Leach felt at the top of her game six years ago. At age 25, she was pursuing a law degree and a master’s in environmental policy at the University of Colorado, earning straight A’s and playing water polo with the university’s club team. But then her toes began to hurt. A few weeks, later […]

Last year, when Mariah Leach was pregnant with her son, her rheumatoid arthritis flared up again. She had stopped medication during pregnancy, but when the autoimmune disease, which causes painful and damaging inflammation in joints and elsewhere, resurged, she and her doctors made the difficult decision for her to restart during her third trimester, based […]

Mariah Leach, 32, a Colorado woman who uses biologics to treat rheumatoid arthritis, said she hopes pharmacies and insurers don’t force her to take a biosimilar version. “The opportunity to have a less expensive treatment option is fabulous,” she said. “I just don’t want to be put on it without my choice. I don’t want […]

In a move expected to increase competition and lower drug prices, the Food and Drug Administration today approved the first “biosimilar” drug, designed to closely mimic existing drugs grown in living cells. Pharmaceutical companies have been able to produce low-cost generic drugs for three decades, but they haven’t before been able to produce knockoff versions […]

Much cheaper, life-saving drugs could become available this year. They are called biosimilars and are copycat versions of drugs for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, breast cancer and psoriasis….