BIG PHARMA - Driving Up The Cost For The Life Saving EpiPen 450% since 2004

High prices on Mylan's EpiPen drive EMTs, patients to manual options

by Carly Helfand |
Jul 13, 2016 8:58am

Mylan’s EpiPen faces scant competition in the epinephrine auto-injector market. But something else is turning some patients away from the med: the company’s prices.

Emergency medical responders and families alike are using manual syringes to avoid the high costs of EpiPen, whose price has increased more than 5-fold since 2004, STAT reports.
While the syringes aren’t perfect--using the approach to get the correct dose administered safely requires medical training--in some cases, agencies have found that the the savings from making the switch is enough to cover that training. An official from the Broadlands-Longview Fire Protection District in Central Illinois, for one, told STAT that eschewing EpiPen for regular syringes would save at least $2,200--enough to train 5 firefighters as emergency medical technicians.
Meanwhile, first responders in Seattle have developed a kit to use in place of EpiPen when treating severe allergies. King County EMS--which sells the kits without epinephrine for $15 apiece to health agencies in states including Alaska, Utah and Oregon--saved more than $150,000 in one year; across the country, it’s estimated that a pilot program using similar kits could save more than $1 million if implemented statewide.
Mylan, a generics giant, has managed to reap blockbuster revenues from its star product thanks to a 450%-plus price increase since 2004, adjusting for inflation, STAT notes, citing data from Elsevier’s Gold Standard Drug Database. And Mylan, for its part, told the publication that the increases “reflect the multiple, important product features and the value the product provides.”
But a lack of competition has also allowed prices to keep soaring. In 2013, Mylan got its first serious challenger in 25 years in the form of Auvi-Q from Sanofi. But last year, an injector fault triggered a hefty recall of the product, spurring the French pharma giant to pull the product from the market and later bail on its marketing partnership with PDL BioPharma.
Rivals’ development efforts have been thwarted, too: Just ask Teva, which received an FDA rejection for its generic version. With “certain major deficiencies” to correct, the Israeli pharma said earlier this year that it expects significant delays for the product, which now won’t roll out before 2017.
And even more recently, U.S. regulators threw up a wall in front of Adamis, asking for more data on its prefilled epinephrine syringe. And while the product wouldn’t have been a large competitor for mammoth EpiPen, it could have “added to managed care pressures” through its stated strategy of acting as a discounted product, Evercore ISI analyst wrote at the time.
But while Mylan may have free rein, it may want to pay heed if market share continue to slip to manual syringes--and some doctors predict it will. As South Florida-based allergy doctor Richard Lockey told STAT, high costs will likely spur more patients to look for other options--with 1 of 6 of his patients already electing to go with the cheaper alternative.
Is the syringe solution ideal? “Well, no, not necessarily,” he told STAT. “It’s better to have an auto-injector, yes.” But “everyone wants to drive around in a Cadillac,” he said, and “not everybody does.”
http://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/high-prices-mylan-s-epipen-drive-emts-patients-to-manual-options

eddie wrote:How often would one need to buy an epipen?

eddie wrote:Wow. That's a lot of money and as you say, you need more than one. My next question would've been the length of the shelf life.

It really is a life-saving piece of equipment. Why you should have to pay for them, I simply can't understand.

eddie wrote:We only seem to learn these lessons as we get older 4ever, as we get wise to the world and it's greedy ways.

Cutting Programs Amid Price Gouging Scandal
by CNBC                
Mylan on Thursday announced plans to boost access to its EpiPen Auto-Injector by expanding already existing programs for patients who are facing higher out-of-pocket costs.
The company is reducing the cost of EpiPens through the use of a savings card which will cover up to $300 for the EpiPen 2-Pak.
Patients who were previously paying the full price for the EpiPen will have their out-of-pocket cost cut by 50 percent. Mylan also is doubling the eligibility for its patient assistance program, which will eliminate out-of-pocket costs for uninsured and under-insured patients and families, as well.
"We recognize the significant burden on patients from continued, rising insurance premiums and being forced increasingly to pay the full list price for medicines at the pharmacy counter," Mylan CEO Heather Bresch said in a statement. "Patients deserve increased price transparency and affordable care, particularly as the system shifts significant costs to them."
Bresch noted, however, that price is only one part of the problem that Mylan is addressing. "All involved must also take steps to help meaningfully address the U.S. health care crisis," she said, "and we are committed to do our part to drive change in collaboration with policymakers, payers, patients and health care professionals."
In addition to Mylan is taking the following immediate actions to help further address the needs of patients and families:

• Mylan also is doubling eligibility for our patient assistance program to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. This means a family of four making up to $97,200 would pay nothing out of pocket for their EpiPen Auto-Injector.
  
• Further, Mylan will continue to offer the EpiPen4Schools program. The program, launched in August 2012, has provided more than 700,000 free epinephrine auto-injectors and educational resources to more than 65,000 schools nationwide to help them be prepared for anaphylaxis events among students.
  
• Mylan also is opening a pathway so that patients can order EpiPen Auto-Injector directly from the company, thereby reducing the cost.
  

On Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called on the pharmaceutical company to voluntarily drop the price of its severe allergy treatment drug EpiPen, which has increased in price by more than 400 percent in the past decade.
"That's outrageous — and it's just the latest troubling example of a company taking advantage of its consumers," Clinton said in a statement. "It's wrong when drug companies put profits ahead of patients, raising prices without justifying the value behind them."
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/mylan-expands-epipen-cost-cutting-programs-amid-price-gouging-scandal-n637596

The result was a de facto monopoly for Mylan. Since Mylan secured the rights to the EpiPen in 2007, they have steadily raised prices over 460 percent (from an average wholesale of $56.64 to $317.82). CEO Heather Bresch – daughter of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia – increased her own compensation by more than 670 percent from $2.5M to $18.9M during the same time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-call-for-mylan-ceo-heather-bresch-to-reduce-epipen_us_57bddc84e4b06384eb3de642

Sheldon Kaplan, who was an engineer for NASA before inventing the EpiPen, lived a humble, middle-class lifestyle. His surviving family members say he was never paid royalties for the device he invented, and never became famous for designing a product now used by millions.
In 1973, when Kaplan was finalizing the design concept for the EpiPen, he was approached by the U.S. Department of Defense, which was looking for a device that could quickly inject an easily deliverable antidote for nerve gas. Kaplan’s design was for a device that a person could easily stick into one’s thigh, prompting a spring-loaded mechanism to push a needle containing life-saving medicine into the user’s bloodstream.
Kaplan’s invention became known as the ComboPen, and was initially used by the Pentagon before becoming available for use by the general public several years later as the EpiPen. However, Kaplan left Survival Technology, Incorporated shortly after creating the EpiPen to become a biochemical engineer, and didn’t follow the success of his invention. He lived out his life in a typical suburban home with two modest cars in the garage.
http://usuncut.com/class-war/epipen-taxpayer-money/

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:     <<<       BIG pharma', Medical funds, Private hospitals -- all are famous for not only gouging US residents for the costs of medicines --  but you also pay more than double the price for hospital stays, surgical costs, and for private health insurance cover, than what you might see in Canada, Australia, Britain or France...  And,  of course, the national/universal health cover in these countries covers a lot of those expenses..

IN SOME of the bigger and richer US private hospitals, an emergency stay for a pregnant woman in difficulties can top a million dollars (!) --  where the same bill in Canada/Oz, England/et al could be $150,000..        

And that is before factoring in, that most of the medical bills in Canada, Britain, Australia, France, Sweden and several other Western countries (like Russia and Cuba, for example..) with some form of "socialised" medicine, will also have their 'Medicare'/'NHS' systems picking up a lot of that already_lower bill..      

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

AND A LOT of it comes down to the simple fact that, since WWII, the US guvm'nt has allowed big business to gain excessive control over the American health/medicine/hospital/insurance sectors --  allowing many of those corporations to aim for a 50% profit margin,  while those same companies are happy to settle for a 6% --> 10% return on their business in many other countries that they operate in  !!!

And, at the same time, just go gullible a lot of Americans can be, is easily shown by how the health industry lobbyists and Repub' politicians have so successfully turned so many people against even a basic form of "socialised" health care, labelling it as a "communist" attack on American "free enterprise"..      

Arkansas judge’s ‘debtors’ prison’ court jailed cancer patient over unpaid bills: lawsuit
Arturo Garcia 24 Aug 2016 at 20:01 ET     
A judge in Sherwood, Arkansas is accused of running a “modern-day debtors’ prison” that victimized a 44-year-old cancer patient, among others, the Huffington Post reported.
“People are doomed for failure when they appear before the court, and most significantly trapped in this never-ending cycle of expanding debt,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “With the resurgence of debtors’ prisons, we will continue to see people cycle in and our of jails and prisons across our country merely because of their inability to pay fines and fees tied to low-level, nonviolent offenses.”
Sherwood District Court Judge Milas “Butch” Hale’s conduct while leading the court’s “hot checks division” is the focus of a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas. Acting in this capacity, Hale sentenced Lee Robertson to 90 days in jail for owing the court $3,054.51. Robertson has been living with pancreatic cancer since 2009, which has affected his ability to pay back past debts.

But according to the suit, Robertson and his fellow defendants unknowingly sign away their right to an attorney in order to be let into the courtroom.
The court also bars defendants’ family and friends from witnessing the proceedings, and no transcripts are kept of the hearings.
“A single bounced check written 10 years ago for $15 can be leveraged into a debt of thousands and thousands of dollars in fines and fees for inability to pay the original check and then inability to pay the payments that were set up,” state ACLU executive director Rita Sklar told KATV-TV.


The Associated Press reported that the city raised $2.3 million from fines and forfeitures issued in Hale’s court, accounting for 12 percent of the city’s budget.
Robertson is one of four plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit. Another plaintiff, 40-year-old Nikki Petree, has paid at least $640 in fines to the city in a case that started over a bounced check for $28.93. The suit stated that she was arrested seven times over that check and was also jailed for at least 25 days.
Hale denied any wrongdoing in a statement to KATV, saying, “We do not run a so called ‘debtor’s prison’ in Sherwood. If a defendant pleads guilty, or is found guilty, of writing a hot check we set up a payment plan. It is only after the third or fourth time that they fail to comply with a court order that we incarcerate.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/arkansas-judges-debtors-prison-court-jailed-cancer-patient-over-unpaid-bills-lawsuit/

Joining scores of people outraged over the price hike of the EpiPen, Sarah Jessica Parker will no longer be associated with the drug maker who manufactures it.
The actress cut ties with pharmaceutical giant Mylan N.V., which makes the emergency allergy treatment, in a statement Thursday.
Reports surfaced this week that the price of the EpiPen twin pack climbed to $608 earlier this year, according to the Associated Press. Contrast that to 2007, when an EpiPen cost $57.
“I’m left disappointed, saddened and deeply concerned by Mylan’s actions,” said Parker in an Instagram post. “I do not condone this decision and I have ended my relationship with Mylan as a direct result of it.” 
http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/sarah-jessica-parker-cuts-ties-with-epipen/ar-BBw4dQL?OCID=ansmsnnews11