Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

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Although not a competitor to Vascepa it is interesting that Amgen is cutting the price of Repatha.

Amgen to Sell Cholesterol Drug for 60% Less
Than Original Price
Repatha’s initial price of more than $14,000 a year has been a deterrentto sales
Insurers have restricted coverage of Amgen’s cholesterol drug because of its price. PHOTO: ROBERT DAWSON`ASSOCIATED
PRESS
Oct. 24, 2019 3?10 pm ET
By Joseph Walker
10/24/2019 Amgen to Sell Cholesterol Drug for 60% Less Than Original Price - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amgen-to-sell-cholesterol-drug-for-60-less-than-original-price-11571944214?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1 2/3
The latest move could help reduce the amount that patients pay for the drug at the pharmacy
counter, and reduce the number of patients who don’t fill their prescriptions because their
copays are too expensive.
After Repatha was approved in 2015, analysts thought it could ring up billions of dollars in
sales. But that hasn’t happened in large part because insurers have restricted coverage of the
drug because of its price. In the second quarter, Amgen reported just $91 million in sales from
Repatha.
To encourage more use, Amgen last year created a new version of Repatha priced at $5,850 a
year. Though it has a different product number code, the new version is identical to its moreexpensive
counterpart.
The company temporarily still offered the original list price option of more than $14,000, which
Amgen discounted heavily in the form of rebates. Some health plans offered only the higherpriced
Repatha, which meant patients faced bigger out-of-pocket costs.
Amgen said it kept selling the higher-priced product to allow time for insurers and pharmacy
benefit managers to adjust to the loss of rebates. In it latest announcement, the company said it
will stop selling the higher-priced version after Dec. 31.
Several pharmaceutical companies have cut the list prices of drugs in the past year in an effort
to extend to patients the discounts they were already providing to pharmacy benefit managers,
known as PBMs, which negotiate prices on behalf of insurers and employers.
Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. sell a cut-rate version of their own anticholesterol
medicine Praluent—which competes with Repatha—at a 60% discount to the
original list price.
Gilead Sciences Inc. in January launched generic versions of two hepatitis C medicines priced
at discounts of 68% and 62%, respectively, to their branded counterparts. Eli Lilly & Co. said in
March that it would market a half-priced version of its diabetes medicine Humalog.
10/24/2019 Amgen to Sell Cholesterol Drug for 60% Less Than Original Price - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amgen-to-sell-cholesterol-drug-for-60-less-than-original-price-11571944214?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1 3/3
The price cuts have typically been for drugs that were already being discounted heavily with
rebates. But rebates often failed to ease the direct costs shouldered by patients in Medicare
Part D and high-deductible commercial health plans that require them to pay a percentage of a
drug’s list price before rebates are applied.
About half of Medicare Part D patients taking Repatha will have copays of less than $50 per
prescription next year, Amgen said. By discontinuing the higher-priced version of the drug, the
company said it expects to increase the portion of patients with copays of $50 or less.
Some Medicare patients are required to pay as much as $370 per month for Repatha, causing
about three-quarters of patients to abandon their prescriptions, said BMO Capital Markets
analyst Do Kim in a note to clients on Thursday.
He said Amgen’s termination of the higher-priced product should increase the number of
patients paying fixed $50 copays and bring down the abandonment rate closer to the 19%
observed in commercial plans.
Write to Joseph Walker at [e-mail]