Amgen has joined the wave of major drugmakers setting up direct-to-consumer programs amid President Donald Trump’s call for more DTC options to lower U.S. drug prices.
The "AmgenNow" program, launched Monday, Oct. 6, is anchored by an offer of significantly discounted Repatha on the site. The cholesterol drug will be available for $239 per month, nearly 60% below its list price of $572.70 per month, which Amgen said in this week’s announcement represents the lowest direct-to-patient price for Repatha among the G7 advanced economies.
While similar DTC programs are typically framed as serving uninsured patients, Amgen acknowledged that other groups, including those “in high-deductible health plans or [who] prefer to pay with cash or out of pocket,” are also welcome to use AmgenNow.
“Amgen is committed to finding new ways to help patients benefit from our medicines,” Murdo Gordon, the California pharma’s executive VP of global commercial operations, said in the release, adding that the program “will allow even more Americans at increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events to benefit from this effective medicine.”
Amgen is the only pharma of the several launching DTC platforms in recent weeks—including Bristol Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Novartis and Boehringer Ingelheim—to directly mention Trump in its launch announcement.
The company said that the Repatha discount is being offered “in support of the Trump Administration’s efforts to lower drug prices for Americans.” It also mentioned plans to make AmgenNow accessible via the federal government’s DTC drug purchasing platform, TrumpRx, which is set to launch in 2026 and touts Pfizer as its first Big Pharma participant.
The $239 monthly price for Repatha will also be available to cash-pay patients at thousands of retail pharmacies across the U.S. via drug discount provider GoodRx, according to a separate announcement Monday.
As Amgen noted, the discount comes just a few days after the company touted late-stage trial results that could potentially extend the decade-old Repatha’s value.
In the study of more than 12,000 high-risk patients who hadn’t had a heart attack or stroke before, the cholesterol-lowering med was shown to significantly curb the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events over standard-of-care treatment alone.
Last week’s data drop followed an FDA label expansion in August that allows Repatha to be used in the primary prevention setting for adults at increased risk of cardiovascular events due to uncontrolled LDL cholesterol.