Is Am­gen still shoot­ing blanks in its war with pay­ers over Repatha re­im­burse­ment?

With on­ly $40 mil­lion in ane­mic Q3 Repatha sales, Am­gen $AMGN has been qui­et­ly seething over the slight mar­ket trac­tion it’s see­ing for a cho­les­terol drug that promised to help rewrite pre­scrib­ing habits in the field. But pay­ers have been loathe to cov­er the pi­o­neer­ing PC­SK9 drug — as well as a ri­val from Re­gen­eron/Sanofi.

Now, they’re hop­ing that ev­i­dence of its im­pact on an im­por­tant bio­mark­er for car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease will per­suade pay­ers to start tear­ing down the walls they built to keep pa­tients away from the drug. But once the da­ta gets a thor­ough re­view, Am­gen and its ri­vals may find them­selves still far from the promised land of block­buster sales.

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