A nice little earner
For the backstory on the EpiPen price-gouging – Tom Cahill at US Uncut:
The EpiPen is a life-saving device commonly used by those with food allergies susceptible to anaphylaxis. Should someone accidentally ingest food that prompts a potentially fatal allergic reaction, like peanuts or shellfish, the EpiPen provides an emergency dose of epinephrine into the person’s bloodstream, immediately alleviating anaphylactic shock. Sheldon Kaplan, who invented the EpiPen, designed it on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense to provide an easily deliverable antidote to nerve gas. The company he was working for eventually released it for public use several years later.
However, in 2007, Mylan Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to the EpiPen and immediately started raising the price. After Heather Bresch, its former top lobbyist, successfully pushed for legislation in Congress that required all public schools to carry EpiPens for children with food allergies, its price hikes became more frequent and more severe, raising by at least 10 percent every other quarter from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2016.
Fun fact about that? The lobbyist who had such success getting legislation in Congress that required all public schools to carry EpiPens for children with food allergies…is the daughter of a senator. She became CEO of Mylan and raised her own salary by 671 percent.
I want to puke.
I’ve been noticing a similar trend in my asthma medicines, at least in the inhalers. I begin to suspect that they are targeting things that are life threatening conditions that a lot of people have.
Sounds very similar to the AIDS medicine gouging, though the prices are a bit lower.
Socialize pharmaceuticals. The people who want to research drugs will still want to do so, but without the pressure to focus on lifestyle drugs and tricks to get sketchy drugs through trials.
I wouldn’t have much sympathy for her or her senator parent if someone publicized their home addresses.
The people who talk about “2nd amendment solutions” don’t seem to mean these problems.
How do we stop these rich assholes from doing stuff like this? Do we need guillotines?
Matthew Ostergren, donchaknow, we just need to let the “Free Market” work its magic, and, lo! Everything will turn out for the best, eventually.
/sarcasm + sobs
Currently Australians are able to buy the EpiPen twin pack for Au$38, another example of the hell of a socialised health system.
I’ll have to express some skepticism in regard to ‘an easily deliverable antidote to nerve gas’. Presumably it’s delivered by flying pigs.
“Mylan Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to the EpiPen”
Does that mean they had a legal monopoly on selling the device? Was there anything to stop another company from making & selling EpiPens for less than Mylan was charging?
I see by following some links that Mylan acquired the patent for the EpiPen.
It looks like the problem is a combination of the patent system & lobbying to make the patented item a requirement.
I’m not sure what changes would be needed to make the system harder to game.
I think so. I’ve always understood “the rights to” to mean “a monopoly on.”
According to her wiki page, she only got a job at the company in the first place because her dad mentioned her lack of employment to a buddy of his that happened to work there. As the CEO. She then recieved “frequent” promotions, which of course was due entirely to her own efforts and had nothing to do with being the daughter of a good buddy of the CEO. Who happened to be a state governor and then US senator. It’s just a compleeeete coincidence that that rapid rise happened to land her in the position of Director of Government Relations in ten years.
This is some of the most obvious cronyism I have ever seen, and I haven’t even touched on the fact that she recieved a falsified degree from her college, which just so happened to be in the state that elected her father as governor.
The whole patent system in the pharmaceutical industry is broken. There comes a point where the government should essentially exercise the right of eminent domain on sufficiently necessary intellectual property–pay the company that has the rights a fair price, then make it public domain to allow competition to actually happen. In the case where a company has bought the rights from the original patent-holder, well, that sets the fair price, too (which means the investing company at most gets an inflation-adjusted payment equal to what they paid for it).
In general, I’d like to see a massive reworking of the patent and copyright laws, anyway, so this could be a start.
My favourite article on the topic, from the always interesting Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs-chairs/