New Podcast Featuring ICER President on Consequences of High Drug Prices and Thoughts on New Cholesterol-Reducing Drugs

April 27, 2021

A recent Managed Healthcare Executive podcast featured ICER President and Founder Dr. Steven Pearson. ICER recently published a report on two drugs, bempedoic acid and inclisiran, that reduce cholesterol levels and might compete with PCSK9 inhibitors on price. Pearson shared his thoughts on releasing drugs that aren’t cost effective, such as expensive PCSK9 inhibitors evolocumab (Repatha) and alirocumab (Praluent), which cost more than $14,000 per year when first released. In comparison, both bempedoic acid and inclisiran cost between $1,600 and $6,000.

“If and when someone writes the history of drug pricing in the U.S., the cholesterol-lowering PCSK9 inhibitors are likely to be a paradigmatic chapter. When Repatha (evolocumab) and Praluent (alirocumab) came on the market in 2015, their list prices were more than $14,000 a year. But expectations of wide use and big sales crashed and burned. Payers and, to some extent, physicians bridled at the price of the new drugs, which are administered by self-injection. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), the cost-effectiveness research organization in Boston, had already made a name for itself in the controversy about the pricing of the hepatitis C antivirals. It weighed in with a cost-effectiveness assessment that said the prices of the PCSK9 inhibitors should be slashed by 60% or more.” Read more here.