Mylan CEO Heather Bresch responds to questions from the House Oversight Committee regarding costs of the EpiPen. Pharmaceutical company Mylan came under attack due to the change, with many users accusing the company of increasing the price due to greed.
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The list price of EpiPens has grown to $608 for a two-pack, an increase of more than 500% since 2007.
Chaffetz, said high executive pay at Mylan “doesn’t add up for a lot of people” as the EpiPen price has increased.
Also damning, they said, were the hundreds of millions of dollars pocketed by Mylan’s top five executives in recent years.
“Parents say they need this”.
Bresch said during testimony that Mylan has 94 percent of the market share for sales of auto-injection devices containing epinephrine, the drug that counteracts the potentially fatal allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney, South Carolina Republican, said that’s the real reason Mrs. Bresch was called before Congress.
Douglas Throckmorton, a deputy director at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, was invited to testify at the hearing to discuss work the agency was doing to approve other similar drugs to improve market competition. “Achieving this level of expansion of awareness requires significant investment”.
Some lawmakers weren’t buying her explanation and used the CEO’s $19 million salary as a point of reference. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). Today’s hearing follows several other hearings about other drug companies raising the price on older drugs.
Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, suggested a generic version would actually make more for Mylan because the company plans to sell it directly to customers.
Mylan expressed Wednesday no plans to lower the price of the brand name EpiPen. “I would say saving the US 180 billion dollars”, she replied, without explanation.
Critics have said the coupons, discount cards and patient assistance programs aren’t real solutions because many customers won’t use them or won’t qualify for them.
Last year, more than 3.6 million USA prescriptions for two-packs of EpiPens were filled, according to data firm IMS Health. Bresch repeatedly faulted the health care system for failing to show how revenue from the EpiPen is distributed, saying that Mylan executives receive no undue financial benefits. Regulators said earlier this year that potential competitor for the EpiPen from Teva Pharmaceuticals had problems with its application and should not be expected to hit the market until 2017 or later. Just this week, lawmakers in the Senate requested an inquiry from the Finance committees. She said the public had overlooked Mylan’s efforts to expand access to the product, such as distributing thousands of them free to schools. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Mylan NV (MYL.O) faced new scrutiny over price hikes for its anti-allergy EpiPen on Tuesday, with US lawmakers calling for a probe of oversight of the company’s rebates to government healthcare plans, while West Virginia said it was investigating whether Mylan defrauded its Medicaid department.
“Price and access exist in a balance, and we believe we have struck that balance”, Bresch said, explaining that under Mylan, access to the EpiPen product had expanded dramatically. The wholesale price for a package of two autoinjectors has risen from $94 in 2007 to $608 this year, according to data from Truven Health Analytics.
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The committee has “price gouging” pharmaceutical companies firmly in its sights, having previously grilled former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical boss Martin Shrekli, dubbed “the world’s most hated man” after he jacked up the price of a HIV-related drug by 5,000%.
