She paid $175 under an old insurance plan but now has a high-deductible plan and she’s already exhausted her health savings account.
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“But you’re the one raising the price”, the CNBC host said. Throughout the almost 20-minute interview, she continued to break down the pricing of the EpiPen, while pointing to pointing to an “outdated” health-care system. “It’s a health care issue”.
“Thus we are basically rolling back the increase of the past year”, he said.
The CNBC interview was part of a counteroffensive by Mylan.
In her statement, SJP rightly accused the company of making the EpiPen cost prohibitive to “countless people”.
The maker of the Epipen, used to halt a severe allergic reaction, says it will make the drug more affordable.
In an appearance on CNBC, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch blamed the health care system for the high prices, and said the rebates were meant to “help ensure that everyone who needs an EpiPen Auto-Injector gets one”.
But the drugmaker didn’t budge on its price hikes Thursday, which have drawn ire both in Congress and from families that have had to shell out increasingly large sums for the potentially life-saving treatment.
The controversy started with a social media movement by concerned parents who launched anonline petition urging Congress to “stop the EpiPen price gouging”.
The petition was reportedly sent to more than 100,000 lawmakers.
Take Two’s Libby Denkmann spoke with Tom Murphy, Health Writer for the Associated Press and asked Mr. Murphy who is really at fault and how can this kind of pharmaceutical price hike be prevented in the future? Annual sales grew from $200 million in 2007 to over $1 billion past year, and leveraging that revenue growth against fixed costs has resulted in Mylan’s gross profit expanding from less than 40% in 2009 to about 45% today.
While the company’s efforts to lower costs to make EpiPens more affordable is a step in the right direction, much more still needs be done, addressed, and reformed to make healthcare accessible for everyone.
According to RawStory.com, the price of EpiPen has increased by 450 percent over the past 12 years, while Bresch’s pay has gone up from $2.5 million in 2007 to $18.9 million in 2015.
“Blaming payers for these massive price hikes is a red herring and doesn’t pass the laugh test with policymakers”, Mark Merritt, CEO of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents the group, said in a statement.
According to the The New York Times, Mylan has imposed two 15 percent increases a year for the last few years. Shares of Express Scripts dropped 6 percent Thursday.
State Sen. Richard Codey, D-Essex, who wrote a letter Monday to the federal Department of Justice asking for an investigation, said he was not swayed by the company’s attempt to lower costs for patients by issuing a coupon.
One would think that after Mr. Shkreli’s disastrous performance that drug company CEOs would pay more attention to their pricing and be more responsible.
Mylan has lost the trust of thousands of consumers, and now it has lost Sarah Jessica Parker.
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The 51-year-old actress has made a decision to end her working relationship with the pharmaceutical giant Mylan, which makes the emergency anti-allergy medication to treat anaphylaxis, after it emerged the price of its life-saving injectors have spiked by 548 per cent since 2007.
