The White House on Wednesday said pharmaceutical firms risked damaging their reputations with big price hikes, but it sidestepped commenting directly on Mylan NV’s decision to raise the price of its severe allergy treatment drug EpiPen.
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In a statement Wednesday, Mylan, which has headquarters in England and Pittsburgh, said millions of patients get EpiPens for as low as $0 under a discount program and that it has distributed more than 700,000 free EpiPens to schools.
Levin, the patient in NY, said that her EpiPen costs are partly covered by insurance, but she has to first pay a separate deductible under the category of injectables before she can purchase her EpiPens at the discounted insurance price.
“The substantial price increase has caused significant concern among patients”, the Iowan Republican wrote in the letter dated Monday. It marked the third time over the past year that Clinton’s comments roiled drug stocks. Mylan Chief Executive Heather Bresch, defending EpiPen’s price in an interview on Thursday on CNBC, said her company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars improving EpiPen, including making its needle invisible, since acquiring the device from German generic drugmaker Merck KGaA.
Clinton echoed calls for Mylan to reduce the “outrageous” price hike.
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Many Wall Street analysts don’t expect the government will take action to force Mylan to roll back EpiPen prices, though the analysts say the attention could deter the company and some of its rivals from increasing drug prices further, thereby limiting one key tool for raising revenue.
EpiPens are injection devices used to ward off potentially fatal allergic reactions, and the price has surged in recent years.
Clinton’s comments came after a bipartisan group of lawmakers called for investigations into the price increase of EpiPens, which are preloaded injections of epinephrine (adrenaline) that people use if they are having a unsafe allergic reaction that could result in death, if untreated.
The current list price for a two-pack of the pens is more than $600, according to Truven Health Analytics, up from $93.88 in 2007. The average cost was more than six times that in May, according to the Elsevier Clinical Solutions’ Gold Standard Drug Database. A lack of competition has allowed the rapid increase in price – patients simply don’t have many other options.
Bresch’s pharmaceutical company not only hiked the price of the EpiPen by 400 percent, but her father is Democratic Sen.
Negro said she has two sons with food allergies and a high-deductible health plan and estimates she will pay $4,000 for the drug in 2017 when her oldest son starts school. Instead, the company focused on insurance policies with high deductibles that shift costs to patients.
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Mylan has plowed substantial sums in recent years into acquisitions and producing biologic drugs. For Mylan, the EpiPen is a key product that provides 40 percent of its operating profit.
