ABSTRACT
In the United States during the late 1980s, decision-making powers in the selection of pharmaceuticals began to shift from doctors to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Pharmaceutical companies became interested in acquiring PBMs, with the aim of increasing their ability to integrate patient claim information with pharmaceutical data. In 2007 the German company Merck KGaA sold off its generics division to the US generics company Mylan. Merck had been marketing generics in Asia since the 1930s. When pharma companies are relatively ignorant of another market sector, often the grass appears to be greener in that sector. Biosimilars is another example of ebbs and flows in enthusiasms over the past dozen years. The term biogeneric was formerly used to define a generic form of a biological product that is patent expired. The first biotech product whose patents expired was Eli Lilly's Humulin.
