Mylan (MYL) is offering a generic alternative to its EpiPens at a 50% discount after coming under fire last week for raising the life-saving drug’s price to about $600, from about $100 in 2007, when it acquired the product.
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Bresch tried to counteract the greedy public image the company has earned in recent weeks. The company confirmed that this is an “authorized generic”, and will not require new authorization through the FDA.
Mylan chief executive Heather Bresch called the decision to launch a generic an “extraordinary commercial response”.
“When its the manufacturer of the brand putting out their own generic product, it is going to be the exact same thing”, said pharmacist AJ Caraballo with The Hometown Pharmacy.
“It is strategic”, generally for a company to produce a generic version of its brand name drug, said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member in pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In a note to clients this morning, the analysts said they suspect the average revenue per prescription will also fall by about 25 percent. Amy Klobuchar rejected a Mylan statement suggesting that the changing nature of insurance companies “has presented new challenges for consumers, and now they are bearing more of the cost”.
Shifting to a lower cost generic also offers relief from growing costs of EpiPens to insurers and government-funded programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.
“For many years even before the EpiPen we had an Epi syringe that we did, in that you have epinephrine that you can draw up into a syringe and then inject it and it works pretty darn well”.
The move to offer a generic is somewhat unusual.
In this case, Mylan faces no immediate generic threat. The EpiPen provides a rapid injection of epinephrine to counter anaphylactic shock occurring from allergic reactions to a bee sting, peanut allergy or other cause. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, are requesting documents and internal communications regarding the “unreasonable” EpiPen price hike – describing the company as having a “virtual monopoly” over the auto-injector market.
Defending criticism on the rising prices, Bresch said in an interview with CNBC that this wasn’t a Mylan issue or an EpiPen issue but rather a health care issue.
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Prices generally “don’t drop until there are more than three or four generic competitors”, said Kesselheim.
