No heartthrob

Sometimes very good isn’t good enough.

Amgen shares took a tumble a week ago after its closely watched new cholesterol drug was shown to work well, but not as spectacularly as the company had indicated and investors had hoped.

Repatha, which is injected every couple of weeks, significantly reduced heart attacks, strokes and heart-related deaths in a major study, but a little less than expected. And it didn’t reduce deaths overall.

“This is a tale straight out of Dickens, a tale of great expectations that were not met,” says analyst Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities. He says investors shouldn’t buy Amgen stock based on those results.

Brozak says the bigger problem is Repatha’s list price, about $14,000 a year. In contrast, statin pills that cost several hundred dollars a year work well for most people.

Repatha is approved only for treating patients who have inherited, skyhigh cholesterol or aren’t helped by statins, and insurers have been making it tough even for those groups to get it. The new findings may change that a bit.

Meanwhile Amgen has made insurers a new offer: If they let more patients get Repatha, Amgen will give refunds if patients have a heart attack or stroke.