Facing one verbal attack after another, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch defended her company’s 550 percent increase in the price of the Epipen (epinephrine) auto-injector since acquiring the product in 2007 and once again blamed the public outcry over the latest hike on a pricing system that hasn’t kept pace with changes in the country’s insurance landscape that force patients to pay more out of pocket.
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But Bresch told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the company only makes $50 on each Epipen.
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah noted that Mylan said it would soon sell a generic version of EpiPen for about $300.
Similar hearings were held in the past year with executives from Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, companies that also sharply raised prices on some drugs.
Since Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen in 2008, the price has gone from around $100 for a pair of pens to around $600 for a two-pack.
The EpiPen hearings on Wednesday may not have solved the problem American families face when attempting to afford the steep price of the devices, but they did manage to unite Republicans and Democrats behind one cause.
The EpiPen cost to Connecticut did not include Mylan’s rebates, which David Dearborn, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Social Services, said his agency could not provide.
Holding up an EpiPen, Chaffetz said: “The actual juice that’s in here that you need costs about a dollar”. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat.
The CEO of Mylan faced a grilling in the House on Wednesday over the skyrocketing cost of the company’s EpiPen allergy treatment. Explain to me. When you buy the generic version?
Rep. Eleanor Norton Holmes, D-D.C., and committee members on both sides of the aisle painted her as the overpaid head of a company that heartlessly raised prices for a device that injects a drug that counteracts potentially deadly allergic reactions.
In the prepared remarks, Ms. Bresch says Mylan has made more than $1 billion investments over the years to raise awareness of anaphylaxis, improve EpiPens and extend their shelf life.
She said most patients at risk of an allergic reaction now have access to the drug, and that 85% of patients pay less than $100 for a two-unit package. It commands over 90 percent of the market, with no competition expected until next year at the earliest.
Lawmakers met Bresch’s discussion of Mylan’s work in schools to make the EpiPen more available with scorn.
“The EpiPen clearly is profitable at prices far lower than Mylan’s USA prices”, Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said in a statement.
She also said the public didn’t understand Mylan’s profit margins and stressed that the company makes a profit off each pen sold in a two-pack for $608. Before rebates, EpiPen costs for Medicare Part D shot up more than 1,000 percent between 2007 and 2014, from $7 million to $87.9 million, the report said.
“I am a very conservative, pro-business Republican, but I am really sickened by what I. heard here today”, Representative John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee said at Wednesday’s hearing.
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“You flew on a private jet”, said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J. He highlighted one of the main critiques Bresch has been hit with since the controversy exploded the summer – her $19 million annual salary. Executives from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals were called before Congress previous year, reports New York Times. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has written several letters to Mylan demanding answers. Congress will have to decide how to go forward during this rare moment of collaboration in order to best represent their financially strapped constituents, who depend on lifesaving drugs such as the EpiPen.
