Senate HELP Committee Advances Two Biosimilar Reform Bills to Accelerate Patient Access to Lower-Cost Medicines
Key Insights
The Senate HELP Committee advanced the Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act and the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act to reduce barriers to lower-cost medicines.
The Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act would eliminate separate statutory requirements for biosimilar interchangeability, streamlining the approval process.
The Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act aims to improve transparency and coordination between the FDA and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (search).
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has advanced two pieces of legislation aimed at reducing barriers to lower-cost prescription medicines and improving pharmaceutical patent transparency. The committee approved the Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act and the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act, drawing praise from the Association for Accessible Medicines (search) (AAM) and its Biosimilars Council (search).
The legislative action marks a significant step toward accelerating patient access to more affordable biosimilar and generic medications while strengthening competition in the U.S. pharmaceutical marketplace.
Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act
The Biosimilar Red Tape Elimination Act would eliminate separate statutory requirements for biosimilar interchangeability. Under current regulations, biosimilars must meet additional requirements to receive an interchangeable designation, which AAM argues creates unnecessary development costs, causes confusion among healthcare stakeholders, and may discourage competition without improving patient outcomes.
"Working to modernize the biosimilar approval framework by eliminating outdated and unnecessary statutory requirements related to interchangeability is imperative to patient access and affordable care," said Alex Keeton, executive director of the Biosimilars Council (search).
The legislation is designed to streamline the approval process and help bring lower-cost medicines to market more quickly by removing what proponents describe as redundant regulatory hurdles.
Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act
The second bill, the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act, focuses on improving transparency and coordination between the FDA and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (search) (USPTO) while strengthening the integrity of the pharmaceutical patent system.
"For generic and biosimilar manufacturers, a predictable and transparent patent system is essential to bringing more lower-cost medicine options to families and individuals in the U.S.," said John Murphy III, president and CEO of AAM. "Greater consistency and transparency between the FDA and USPTO offers stakeholders increased certainty—and that leads to a more resilient supply chain, not only better supporting patients, but also better supporting the entire healthcare system."
Economic and Clinical Impact
According to AAM, biosimilars have generated more than $56 billion in savings since entering the U.S. market in 2015 and have been used in more than 3.3 billion days of patient therapy, with no clinically meaningful differences in patient safety or outcomes compared to reference products. Together, generic and biosimilar medicines have saved the U.S. healthcare system $467 billion over the past decade.
Additional Legislative Priorities
AAM also urged policymakers to continue focusing on additional measures to expand patient access to affordable medicines. The organization specifically called for continued consideration of the Ensuring Timely Access to Generics Act of 2025 (S. 3014), which would strengthen oversight of the FDA's citizen petition process and help prevent its misuse to delay generic competition. That bill did not advance from committee during the latest session.
AAM thanked members of the Senate HELP Committee for advancing the legislation and encouraged continued bipartisan focus on measures that expand patient access to affordable prescription drugs.