Biosimilars Are Revolutionizing Healthcare: Is This Industry Leader a Buy?
A recent poll on prescription drug prices found that 83% of Americans view prescription drug prices as too expensive. In recent years, U.S. lawmakers and regulatory agencies have worked together to begin tackling the concerns of Americans about the cost of prescription drugs. When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, this opened up an avenue for the first biosimilar drug to ultimately be approved and launched in 2015. That was Novartis' (NYSE: NVS) Zarxio, a biosimilar to Amgen's (NASDAQ: AMGN) white-blood-cell booster named Neupogen for patients undergoing intense chemotherapy.
Amgen's recently released annual trends report estimates that the competition created by biosimilars contributed to a cumulative total of $21 billion in U.S. healthcare system savings since the momentous launch of Zarxio. This is a fraction of the nearly $3 trillion in cumulative total prescription drug spending since that time. But biosimilars are playing a more important role in the prescription drug industry with each passing year.
As a deeper look at the industry and Amgen's biosimilar drug pipeline will reveal, the company is at the forefront of reshaping healthcare as we know it. But is Amgen stock a buy for dividend growth investors?
Source Fool.com
