BIO Submits Comments Re: CMS HCPCS Public Meeting
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The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is pleased to provide comments in response to the May 7 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) Public Meeting Agenda for Drugs, Biologicals and Radiopharmaceuticals (“Public Meeting Agenda”).</p>
The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is pleased to provide comments in response to the May 7 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) Public Meeting Agenda for Drugs, Biologicals and Radiopharmaceuticals (“Public Meeting Agenda”).
BIO is the world's largest trade association representing biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations. BIO’s members develop medical products and technologies to treat patients afflicted with serious diseases, to delay the onset of these diseases, or to prevent them in the first place. In that way, our members’ novel therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics not only have improved health outcomes, but also have reduced healthcare expenditures due to fewer physician office visits, hospitalizations, and surgical interventions.
BIO represents an industry that is devoted to discovering, and ensuring patient access to, innovative treatments. Accordingly, we closely monitor coding policies for their potential impact on patient access to the drugs and biologicals most appropriate for them. With respect to the Public Meeting Agenda, BIO urges CMS to consider the following recommendations:
• CMS should create unique HCPCS codes for each and every biosimilar product, including those that share a reference product; and
• CMS should issue unique HCPCS codes for each new beta amyloid radiopharmaceutical, consistent with the Agency’s stated policy.
