Vermont Business Magazine In a letter sent Tuesday to the CEO of pharmaceutical company Mylan, 20 senators, including Senator Patrick Leahy (D) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I), expressed their concerns about the company’s recent significant price hikes for the life-saving EpiPen Auto-Injector. The letter comes on the heels of an earlier letter to the firm, a letter headed by Leahy and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) – the two leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- with several queries asking for information related to the extraordinary price hikes.
In the new letter, the senators raise questions about Mylan’s decision to expand its patient assistance program, which allows the company to sharply increase prices while passing the cost of these increases onto insurance companies and ultimately to consumers, and to introduce an authorized generic EpiPen at more than half the price of the branded EpiPen. The letter was signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (D-NY), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward Markey (D-MA), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Jack Reed (D-RI), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Jon Tester (D-Mt.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
The senators wrote: “The EpiPen…has become so exorbitantly expensive that access to this life saving combination product is in jeopardy for many Americans. Mylan’s near monopoly on the epinephrine auto-injector market has allowed you to increase prices well beyond those that are justified by any increase in the costs of manufacturing the EpiPen.”
In the letter they note that in response to public concern about the rising cost of the EpiPen, Mylan has expanded its current accessibility programs -- including increasing the maximum value of its savings card from $100 to $300 – although the company would not reduce the EpiPen’s sticker price. The senators point out: “These changes will help some customers who are struggling to afford EpiPens. Your discount programs, however, represent a well-defined industry tactic to keep costs high through a complex shell game.”
The letter continues: “When patients receive short-term co-pay assistance for expensive drugs, they may be insulated from price hikes, but insurance companies, the government, and employers still bear the burden of these excessive prices. In turn, those costs are eventually passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums, but the drug company is no longer in the spotlight. Because couponing can massively inflate costs, this practice has been outlawed by the government in Medicare and Medicaid. But couponing practices are perfectly legal for commercial insurance and Affordable Care Act exchange coverage.”
The senators ask that Mylan answer a series of questions to provide additional information about the impact that the EpiPen price hike and the associated changes in Mylan’s patient assistance program and other accessibility programs will have on consumers and on taxpayers.
Mylan NV (NASDAQ, TASE: MYL) announced Monday that its US subsidiary will launch the first generic to EpiPen Auto-Injector (epinephrine injection, USP) at a list price of $300 per generic EpiPen two-pack carton, which represents a discount of more than 50 percent to the Mylan list price. EpiPen Auto-Injector generates more than $1 billion in annual sales, according to Mylan invesor documents. Mylan reported revenues of $9.4 billion in 2015.
Mylan is a Netherlands-based global company with US headquarters in Pittsburgh. It makes transdermal products for self-administration of medicines. In Vermont it employees about 540 workers at two plants in St Albans and Swanton, where it makes transdermal patches. It laid off 10 percent of its Vermont workforce earlier this year, but at the time said it was committed to its local business.
Read a PDF copy of the senators’ letter HERE: http://www.warren.senate.gov/
Source: Leahy. Mylan. VBM 8.30.2016