Dear Acting Administrator Slavitt:
The Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF) is a 501 (c)(3) patient group that works to
improve the quality of life for people with chronic disease, often focusing on those least able to advocate for themselves. As a patient advocacy organization, GHLF represents more than 80,000 chronically ill patients across the country. Many of these individuals have rheumatoid arthritis, take biologics, and stand to benefit greatly from the addition of biosimilars to the market. I am writing to you today to express our collective opposition to a provision in the CMS proposed rule to the 2016 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule that seeks to assign one Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) code to all biosimilars to a particular reference product.