The Trump administration has issued a policy change that could drive up prices of certain biologic drugs, implementing a new industry-backed measure that overturns existing regulation that promoted lower prices.

The move came after months of intense lobbying last year by pharmaceutical companies to overturn an Obama administration policy, introduced in 2015, that rewarded doctors with larger profits if they used the lowest-priced biosimilars, which are generic-like copies of brand-name biologic drugs. The rationale was that steering doctors to lower-priced products would compel drugmakers to cut prices to capture market share.

Drugmakers argued the old rule would discourage investment in biosimilars.

The Trump administration’s new policy is an industry-backed approach that drugmakers say will help them earn sufficient profit on their investments in biosimilars. In turn, drugmakers say, the policy will attract more competitors to the market and reduce drug costs over the long term. It is an argument industry lobbyists made repeatedly last year in dozens of meetings with members of Congress and federal and White House officials, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal lobbying disclosure records.

Coherus BioSciences Inc., a biosimilar developer that lobbied for the change, has called the new policy a significant victory.