Judge Blocks Colorado Price Cap on Amgen's Enbrel
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- Amgen secured a court order blocking the Colorado Prescription Drug Affordability Board from capping the price of Enbrel, with the judge finding the company is "likely to be significantly harmed"
- The ruling pauses a first-in-the-nation move by the Colorado board, created roughly four years ago in response to rising prescription drug costs and empowered to set upper payment limits on selected drugs for most state residents
- Also in the same Pharmalittle digest, Medicare launched an 18-month trial offering Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Eli Lilly's Zepbound at $50 a month as a weight-loss treatment for people 65 and older
- CMS estimates eligible patients for the obesity-drug program in the single-digit millions — a stark shift from the steep out-of-pocket costs that have kept these drugs out of reach for many seniors in recent years
- STAT framed the Enbrel ruling as "a victory for the pharmaceutical industry" against state drug-pricing experiments, and only STAT News cross-covered the same story, signaling consensus on the industry-win angle
Why it matters: Colorado's Prescription Drug Affordability Board was created roughly four years ago as a first-in-the-nation attempt to cap what residents pay for selected drugs; the ruling pauses that experiment and validates the industry's argument that such caps cause "significant harm." In a separate story in the same digest, a new CMS 18-month trial makes Wegovy and Zepbound available to an estimated single-digit-millions of seniors at $50 a month — a sharp drop from the steep out-of-pocket costs of recent years.
