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The Illusion Of Interchangeability: The Benefits And Dangers Of Guidance-Plus Rulemaking In The Fda's Biosimilar Approval Process, Jonathan Stroud

Jonathan R. K. Stroud

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the ambitious Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While media attention focused largely on the sweeping changes the bill makes to the nation’s healthcare system, there was also a less-noticed rider to the bill, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (Biosimilars Act). The Biosimilars Act grants the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad new authority to create an accelerated premarket approval pathway for generic competition to biologics in an attempt to drive biologic drug prices down and reduce the overall costs of health care. Traditionally, inventors of medical …