What’s next for the generic lobby?

The signing of the CREATES Act has drummed up another controversy, too: questions about whether the Association for Accessible Medicines spent far too much political capital on that bill instead of focusing on more pressing issues. 

“This is yesterday’s battle,” one generic lobbyist told me. They emphasized that generics have more pressing issues nowadays, things like insurers covering expensive brand drugs rather than cheaper generics, and legislative proposals that would crack down on generics’ own allegedly questionable business practices.  

As I reported on CREATES I started running into advertisements for AAM’s new campaign, “Doesn’t Add Up.” AAM launched the campaign in October and has promised it’ll be a “seven figure” campaign. It focuses on issues like insurance coverage for generics and so-called patent thickets that delay cheaper biosimilars, both of which lobbyists gripe about. 

In recent weeks AAM ran full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and it has even started paying to have its TV ads run in Ubers and Lyfts that drive near the capitol. 

In an interview, AAM’s CEO Chip Davis beat back the criticism of his group being too myopically focused on CREATES, but he also stressed that it is “by no means the only issue that needs to be addressed.” He also had some pointed comments for those among his ranks that question whether CREATES is an issue. 

“Like a lot of things in Washington, somebody could say it's not a big issue until it impacts them and then it becomes a very big issue,” he added.