NEW YORK – Amgen Inc. will pull its higher-priced version of its cholesterol drug Repatha from the market, an effort to boost sales of the drug by offering only a lower-priced version of the product.
- The move locks in a price cut Amgen announced last year. Effective Dec. 31, the remaining version of the heart drug will cost $5,850 a year, 60% less than the original product.
- Repatha is one of the products the company manufactures in Rhode Island.
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- The high- and low-cost versions of the drug are identical in every respect, and their different prices are a reflection of the United States’ wildly complex drug pricing system. While the higher price let Amgen dangle large rebates to insurers who cover the drugs, patients picking the products up would often face substantial out-of-pocket costs because of the higher list price.
- High out-of-pocket costs hurt sales, as patients declined to actually fill their prescriptions. Many Medicare patients were opting against taking Repatha when confronted with high prices and co-pays, according to the FH Foundation, an industry-supported advocacy group for people with a disorder that causes ultra-high cholesterol.
- Pulling the higher-priced version from the market will likely cut patients’ out-of-pocket costs, which Amgen hopes will help sales of what was expected to be a blockbuster product.
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- “If you can get an insurer to supply a product, a doctor to prescribe a product, and a pharmacy to carry the product, but the patient can’t afford the product, then the health-care system is broken,” said Murdo Gordon, Amgen’s executive vice president of global commercial operations, in an interview. “We still feel that Repatha has a huge opportunity to impact many, many patients lives.”
Riley Griffin is a reporter for Bloomberg News.
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