None other than U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s daughter.
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Manchin spokesman Jonathan Kott said Wednesday the senator had no comment.
Tensions over this issue have flared up this week as senators and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have taken a stand against the price of the medicine.
From 2007 to 2015, the company’s stock price more than tripled and the compensation of CEO Heather Bresch increased from $2,453,456 to ,931,068, according to NBC News.
Bresch, who was president in 2007 and has since become chief executive, was awarded her massive pay increase over nine years. Mylan declined to comment on the price increases coinciding with legislation to encourage EpiPen use. It reported second quarter net income of $168.4 million.
In a statement, the company blames the rising cost of insurance, since many people have high deductible plans.
“There have been numerous accounts of individuals who are simply unable to afford this lifesaving medication and as a outcome have gone without, risked using an expired product, or resorted to uncertain (but less expensive) treatments”, they wrote. “This current and ongoing shift has presented new challenges for consumers, and now they are bearing more of the cost” of the devices, the statement said.
Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal of CT and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota addressed the price hike at press conferences alongside doctors and affected families Wednesday.
“And I think it raises significant questions, even moral questions, in the minds of a lot of people”. “I know him very well”.
Like all drugmakers, Mylan periodically hikes its prices.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who has asked the company to lower its prices, is holding an event on Wednesday where he will call for investigations by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Federal Trade Commission into potential antitrust violations and deceptive and illegal trade practices. “We do not wish to make Teva’s problems Mylan’s problems, or to inflict them on Mylan’s shareholders and other stakeholders”, he wrote.
The cost of the EpiPen, for people with severe allergies, has risen almost 500 percent since 2009. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen.
Today, the cost of the drug is approximately $600 according to Good RX, which posts drug prices at pharmacies across the country.
“I will observe, however, that pharmaceutical companies that often try to portray themselves as the inventors of life-saving medication often do real damage to their reputation by being greedy and jacking up prices”.
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On Wednesday, Clinton released a statement blasting her family foundation’s donor. “Time and again, we see reports of a pharmaceutical company buying a prescription drug product and then raising the price dramatically”, she wrote. He cited the cost to parents whose children need them and also to schools that keep the EpiPens on hand.
