{"id":180412,"date":"2017-04-26T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T00:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/04\/26\/just-when-you-thought-that-the-epipen-folks-could-not-get-any-worse\/"},"modified":"2017-04-26T19:29:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T00:29:00","slug":"just-when-you-thought-that-the-epipen-folks-could-not-get-any-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/04\/26\/just-when-you-thought-that-the-epipen-folks-could-not-get-any-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Just When You Thought That the EpiPen Folks Could Not Get Any Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

In addition to price gouging and fraud, it now appears that Mylan Pharmaceuticals used nuisance lawsuits to lock itself in as a preferred Medicaid provider<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Pharmaceutical company Mylan sued West Virginia in 2015 to keep its EpiPens on the state\u2019s \u201cpreferred drug list,\u201d which, if successful, would mean that the state\u2019s Medicaid programs would have to automatically pay for the pricey epinephrine auto-injectors. <\/p>\n

The bold and unusual move by Mylan\u2014which ultimately failed\u2014is yet another example of the aggressive marketing and legal tactics the company used to boost profits from EpiPens, which halt life-threatening allergic reactions. Since Mylan acquired rights to EpiPen in 2007, the company raised its price by more than 400 percent. Mylan also allegedly made illegal deals with schools<\/a> to undercut competitors and allegedly scammed federal and state regulators out of millions<\/a> in rebates by knowingly misclassifying the device. <\/p>\n

Last year, EpiPen\u2019s sales and expanded markets brought in more than $1 billion in revenue<\/a> for Mylan. The company\u2019s CEO, Heather Bresch, is one of the highest-paid CEOs in the industry, earning nearly $19 million annually.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additionally, the company offered discounts on the condition that competitors’ products not be covered<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When Mylan dramatically increased the price<\/a> of its life-saving EpiPen devices, it drew sharp rebuke all around for what seemed like a purely greedy\u2014and heartless\u2014move. But according to a lawsuit filed by French drug maker Sanofi, the move wasn\u2019t just out of simple greed. Instead, it was part of an underhanded scheme to \u201csquash\u201d competition from Sanofi\u2019s rival device, the Auvi-Q.<\/span>

<\/span>With the lofty prices and near-monopoly over the market, Mylan could dangle deep discounts to drug suppliers\u2014with the condition that they turn their backs on Sanofi\u2019s Auvi-Q\u2014the lawsuit alleges. Suppliers wouldn\u2019t dare ditch EpiPens, the most popular auto-injector. And with the high prices, the rebates wouldn\u2019t put a dent in Mylan\u2019s hefty profits, Sanofi speculates.<\/span>

<\/span>Coupled with a smear campaign and other underhanded practices, Mylan effectively pushed Sanofi out of the US epinephrine auto-injector market, Sanofi alleges. The lawsuit<\/a>, filed Monday in a federal court in New Jersey, seeks damages under US Antitrust laws.<\/span>
In short, Sanofi claims that \u201cMylan engaged in illegal conduct to squelch this nascent competition, harming both Sanofi and U.S. consumers.\u201d<\/span>
According to the lawsuit:<\/span><\/p>\n

In particular, Mylan offered new and unprecedented rebates to commercial insurance companies, pharmaceutical benefit managers, and state-based Medicaid agencies (collectively \u201cthird-party payors\u201d) conditioned exclusively on Auvi-Q\u00ae not being an [epinephrine auto-injector] drug device that those payors would reimburse for use by U.S. consumers.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m beginning to think that we need to start throwing people in jail for monopolistic conspiracies, because fines are increasingly seen to be just a cost of business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to price gouging and fraud, it now appears that Mylan Pharmaceuticals used nuisance lawsuits to lock itself in as a preferred Medicaid provider: Pharmaceutical company Mylan sued West Virginia in 2015 to keep its EpiPens on the state\u2019s \u201cpreferred drug list,\u201d which, if successful, would mean that the state\u2019s Medicaid programs would have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,368,364,407,567],"class_list":["post-180412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-justice","tag-pharma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}