Bresch, daughter of Sen. The device accounts for about 20 percent of company profits.
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The first hearing took place in February, when the now infamous 32-year-old “pharma bro” and former Turing Pharmaceuticals executive Martin Shkreli was brought to the hill to testify over the price increase of his company’s drug Daraprim.
“I know there is considerable concern and skepticism about the pricing”, she told the panel. Bresch says the company makes only $50 in profit on each EpiPen. She had 15 different positions as she worked herself up, she said.
But Chaffetz questioned if the decision followed the heat Mylan has faced since August, when a price increase led to a national controversy.
Bresch says to cut costs to consumers, Mylan will start offering a cheaper, generic version and increase access to a discount card.
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.
“I was struck by what humanitarians you people of Mylan are”, said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
“What happened that you deserved to earn a 67 time increase?”
Responding to the lawmakers, Bresch laid out the changes Mylan has instituted in the past weeks to address the uproar.
“You have five executives in five years that earned almost $300 million in compensation”, said Chaffetz. So there were deaths in schools happening because there may have been EpiPens or other epinephrine auto injectors but they weren’t allowed to be used in children, who tragically died.
When asked how many generic versions of the EpiPen were waiting for FDA approval, Throckmorton said he couldn’t answer the question. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican committee chairman, asked her at the hearing in Washington.
“The greed is astounding, it’s sickening and disgusting”, the Tennessee Republican said before the committee went on recess to participate in a vote on the house floor.
“It’s not optional”, (R-UT) Congressman Chaffetz said.
Mr. Chaffetz offered little sympathy for Mylan’s bottom line, pointing to generous pay for Mylan’s executives.
He noted that some parents buy several packs of the device to make sure one is handy if their child needs it.
The committee’s top members have said they are sympathetic to the outrage of families and schools struggling to afford the device, which injects a dose of epinephrine to stop life-threatening allergic reactions. He said FDA approved four other auto-injectors – two of which are on the market and none of which are generic.
Gayle Manchin was at the forefront of a movement to require schools to purchase EpiPens in 2012. She had been appointed by her husband, then the state’s governor, to the West Virginia State Board of Education five years earlier. The percentage pharmaceutical manufacturers pay Medicaid is higher for brand drugs (23.1 percent) compared to generic drugs (13 percent), thus, Medicaid receives a lower rebate for drugs inappropriately categorized as generics.
Mylan is facing a myriad of investigations into its pricing and sales practices.
Bresch did express some regret in her submitted testimony. “Figuring out the complexity of drug pricing has me really flummoxed”.
The CEO also asserted that the EpiPen had competition throughout the course of the yearslong price hikes, though lawmakers pressed her on whether the product’s near-dominance in the market could be classified that way.
“I’m concerned this is a rope-a-dope strategy”, Cummings told her. “They raised the prices, for the reason being, I believe, to get filthy rich at the expense of our constituents”.
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Devlin, in an emailed statement, said that from 2010 to 2015, rebates to Medicare Part D plans were up 440 percent, which would reduce the increase stated by the Kaiser Family report.
