The scandal over the EpiPen ought to embarrass Bresch and her company, but all those unsolicited testimonials to the device’s life-saving capacity might just embolden them.
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Mylan CEO Heather Bresch has defended the price hikes, saying the company only received $274 of the total price for a twin-package while insurers, pharmacies and other parties divvy up the rest.
Mylan has responded to the public outcry over the price hikes by expanding programs to make EpiPens more affordable and promising a cheaper, generic version. That assistance will also be offered to people getting Mylan’s generic EpiPens, but the $300 copay cards will only work with brand-name EpiPens.
Introducing a generic “is a way to do it without making enemies with a bunch of Fortune 25 companies who control your fate”, he said.
Public Citizen and several other groups are coordinating an action on Tuesday that will deliver more than 600,000 petitions to Mylan’s corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania to demand the company reduce EpiPen prices.
EpiPen has a 94 percent market share for auto-injector devices, which jabs a dose of the drug epinephrine into the thigh to counter unsafe allergic reactions such as to peanuts, food allergies and bee stings. Shkreli remained silent under the Fifth Amendment, but Cummings said in a release that he was interested in having Shkreli in to testify again.
“I prescribe brand names, when I do not have a choice and there is no generic alternative”, Brahmbhatt said, noting that sometimes the difference between brand and generic can be a hundred or more dollars.
“It looks like Mylan might make even more money with this direct-to-consumer effort”, Maris said. Last week, leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Special Committee on Aging sent similar letters to Mylan, requesting information about how the company determined the price of EpiPens. Mylan is clearly benefiting from its virtual monopoly position and the inability of competitors to produce a rival product. After losing a fight against the practice, “authorized generics are now an established part of this highly competitive industry and we are participating in the industry as it exists today”.
The authorised generic will be identical to the branded product, including device functionality and drug formulation. Launching a generic version of the EpiPen can help the drugmaker protect its market share from competition.
“It’s outrageous. People shouldn’t be fooled by the idea that the system made them do it. Mylan is to blame for the high prices of EpiPen”, Maris said. The stock had fallen 12 percent last week amid a wave of criticism over prices of EpiPen, which generates annual sales of $1 billion.
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Its only US competitor is Adrenaclick, a device sold by Impax Laboratories that has not caught on with patients and doctors.
