SACRAMENTO – A consumer health advocacy group supports Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent signing of Assembly Bill 824, a bill that prevents pharmaceutical companies from paying generic drug makers to not develop and bring lower-cost medicines to market.
It is unclear whether there may be federal preemptions to AB 824.
“The attorney general’s office was a sponsor on the bill and they really had their lawyers doing all of the in-depth legal background on it,” Rachel Linn Gish, communications director at Health Access California, said.
She added that is has been common practice for prescription drug companies to block such proposals, including Senate Bill 17, a drug price transparency law.
“It’s clear that the prescription drug companies usually try to fight these things in court,” Gish said. “I don’t know about the federal preemptions, but I can tell you that in the past (drug companies) have brought suit against other drug price bills that California has done in the past.”
From a consumer advocacy standpoint, Gish said, it’s hoped the generic drug companies try to come to an agreement with the brand name drug manufacturers to make the patent times shorter so that the generics can come to market sooner.
“What we don’t want is for those agreements to be collusive,” Gish said. “We want the generics to be able to bring these challenges to the brand name patents (and) to make sure somebody isn’t getting any financial incentive to stay off the market longer,” Gish said.
How soon any changes will be obvious to consumers is up in the air.
“In a perfect world, (AB 824) would end the practice of 'pay-for-delay' because (drug companies) know that the AG is looking … but it won’t end the practice of generics bringing the challenges to the patents.”
Gish noted the attorney general has already settled a handful of pay-for-delay cases and that the new legislation should help drug manufacturers be more transparent.
In a statement published in the National Law Review, the Association for Accessible Medicines opposed AB 824, saying it “penalizes procompetitive patent settlements that significantly expedite generic and biosimilar access.”