Mylan: an allergic reaction to Epipen price “gouging”
The backlash against US drugs companies and their pricing strategies has found a new target, said Lex in the FT. Firmly in the crosshairs is Mylan, maker of the Epipen – a syringe “pen” that delivers a life-saving shot of synthetic adrenaline to allergy sufferers. Since Mylan acquired the rights, in 2007, it has “jacked up the sticker price” for a pack of two from $100 to $600, without “a good explanation” – a move condemned as “outrageous” by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Mylan boss Heather Bresch – whose pay has soared from $2.5m in 2007 to $18.9m last year – recently insisted that the Epipen was “not an expensive product”. The political hurricane has changed her mind, said Anne Steele in The Wall Street Journal. The company, which dominates the $1bn-plus allergy treatment market, now says it will launch “a generic alternative” to the Epipen, identical to the branded product, at a 50% discount. Yet far from mollifying opponents, the outcry has intensified, said Reuters. Campaigners want the pack price dropped to $100 for two, claiming that that is roughly “the price charged in France”.
After Clinton’s latest tilt at “gouging” drugs firms, pharma stocks sunk globally at “the prospect of tougher regulation”, said Gavin Lumsden on Citywire. Many investors, though, “believe the chances of effective reform becoming law are slim”. Yet “this genie cannot easily be stuffed back into the bottle”, said Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. “Predatory” drug-pricing by de facto monopolists fuels “the worst conspiracy theories” about big business. It is time the NHS cracked down on the “exploitative behaviour” of some of these companies in the UK, by using its purchasing power “to fire a warning shot to monopolists everywhere”.