Amgen has released a new study laying out the economic argument to justify the $14,523 list price for its cholesterol medicine, Repatha.
Earlier this week, an analysis was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluding that Repatha should be marked down by roughly two-thirds off the list price to be seen as a good value.
For Amgen’s counter-study, published in AMA Cardiology, investigators used real-world numbers on high-risk patients, pegging it to quality adjusted life years (QALY), a commonly-used, yet controversial measure of assessment.
Amgen's evolocumab, a next-generation cholesterol-lowering drug, was approved by the FDA in 2015, along with rival drug alirocumab (Praluent), from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi.
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