Amgen, Sanofi and Regeneron would need to lower the list price of their cholesterol-lowering drugs by more than two-thirds to ensure the treatments are cost-effective in the U.S., according to a new study published in JAMA Tuesday.
On average, Repatha and Praluent cost more than $14,000 per patient each year. The medications are meant to be a lifelong treatment for a growing number of people.
Researchers estimate that use of these newer cholesterol-lowering drugs would lower healthcare expenses by $29 billion over the next five years, since fewer people would suffer heart attacks and strokes that require hospital treatment.
However, providing all eligible patients with Praluent and Repatha would also cause a $120 billion increase in annual U.S. healthcare spending, researchers said.
"This hopefully should prompt some discussion about what are reasonable or tolerable drug prices in the U.S.," Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an author of the study and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a Bloomberg report. "We modeled many, many, many scenarios, and this drug is not cost-effective at the ticket price."
Regeneron and Sanofi believe the analysis exaggerates real-world use of the drugs, causing an inflated estimate of the cost burden, since the study looks at the wholesale price of the drug and not the price actually paid after pharmacy benefit managers and insurers negotiate for rebates.
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