The EpiPen is a widely used medical device that delivers emergency medication to prevent someone with a severe allergic reaction from going into anaphylactic shock. There's a shortage of EpiPens across the United States. Parents of kids with serious allergies are worried about sending their kids back to school without one. Read the rest
The FDA's Sept 6 warning letter to Epipen manufacturer Meridian (a division of Pfizer) condemns the company for knowingly shipping out defective products that led to the death of the customers who paid hyper-inflated prices for the devices, which Meridian manufactured for notorious pharma profiteers Mylan. Read the rest
Didn't it seem strange that Mylan, the pharmaceutical company that makes the EpiPen, enjoyed a stock price rally when the news came out in October that it was going to have to give the US government $465 million for overcharging Medicare? Well, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General says that Mylan overcharged taxpayers by $1.27 billion, making the half-billion dollar payout a simple cost-of-doing business expense.
Mylan, the scummy firm that jacked up the price of a single EpiPen injector from $57 to $500, deliberately misclassified the EpiPen as a generic drug, which allowed them to charge more for the life-saving medication.
From Gizmodo:
The late afternoon news dropped the stock price of Mylan by 1 percent and tomorrow’s trading will show just how big a deal for the company this problem will be in the short term. Shareholders are pissed and a group of four institional investors are calling for six directors of the company to be blocked from reelection. The investors say that the directors have caused Mylan “significant reputational and financial harm.”
From NBC:
Mylan didn't invent the EpiPen, it acquired it in 2007, getting a drug that had been approved since 1987 and had 90 percent market dominance. Nor does it manufacture the EpiPen itself. Mylan buys it from a wholly owned Pfizer subsidiary for $34.50 per pen.
Mylan Chairman Robert Coury made $160 million 2016.
From a CNBC interview with Mylan CEO Heather Bresch:
Read the restCNBC’s Brian Sullivan interjected, asking her to explain how the price of the drug could go from $100 five years ago to $600 today.
The head of the pharmaceutical company that makes EpiPens raised the price of the life-saving device by over 400%. She was rewarded with a 671% raise. Read the rest
