At age 48, Robin Ridley of Goodlettsville, Tenn., was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that affects the plasma cells found in bone marrow. Starting next year, Robin’s COBRA coverage and the drug manufacturer support she now receives for her medication, Revlimid, will end.
In a Commonwealth Fund brief, Henry Waxman, Bill Corr, Kristi Martin, and Sophia Duong explore why generic alternatives to Revlimid are not available and suggest policies that might help patients who struggle to pay for life-saving drugs. The bipartisan Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act of 2017, which the Senate Judiciary Committee passed this month, is one potential policy approach to curbing anticompetitive behavior by drug manufacturers.