Mylan Pharmaceuticals is really feeling the heat. An outpouring of outrage over its exorbitant pricing for EpiPen has caused it to announce plans to offer a generic version of the product for half the $600+ dollars of the branded version. The EpiPen is a self-injecting device used for life-saving rescue of individuals with anaphylaxis, a severe form of allergic reaction. (See my recent article for background.) Mylan joined the new “gouge-em if you can” industry club by buying a old standard drug and jacking up the price to astronomical amounts assuming we patients had no recourse but to raid our kids’ college accounts to pay for it. How broken is a system that has the same company selling the same drug at two vastly different prices in the same country? I guess Mylan assumes it is still acceptable to rip-off patients with health insurance. This face-saving move is yet another confirmation of the hypocrisy of our two-or-more-tiered healthcare system, and the absurdity of our drug pricing non-system. The only way for Mylan to get out of this public relations hole it is digging is to give EpiPen away for free as a public service to anyone who needs it! Continue reading “Mylan Drug Company Drops Price of EpiPen – Sort Of!”
Author: P Hasselbacher
Another Drug Company Rips Off the Public: Mylan’s EpiPen.
Why do they do it? Because they can– and because we let them!
Mylan, the manufacturer of the EpiPen, an auto-injector used to inject epinephrine beneath the skin, has raised the price of its product some 800% between 2009 and 2016. The active drug itself is a traditional generic that costs very little. Mylan has copied a business model of buying a standard drug that is essential for some and jacking up the price to more than what desperate people are willing or able to pay. It was easy to do so because Mylan lost its major competition and because individuals with “good” health insurance are insulated from having to pay the full price in the drugstore. The price of the usual prescription for EpiPen is reported to have risen from $100 in 2009 to around $600 today. The pricing of this medical device that makes it convenient to carry and administer epinephrine is another of the innumerable examples of the failure of our healthcare system to protect the interests of individuals with medical needs and to tolerate predation such as this. Continue reading “Another Drug Company Rips Off the Public: Mylan’s EpiPen.”
Medicare Updates Its Prescription Drug Utilization Database.
An improved goldmine of information not otherwise available to the public and a flood of opioids.
On August 18, CMS released the second iteration of its cost-and-utilization database of prescription drugs written for patients covered by Medicare Part-D Medicare which includes beneficiaries in Part-C Managed Care and stand-alone Medicare Part-D Prescription Drug Plans. Compared to the updates of Medicare’s other 2013 public-use healthcare utilization files, this release seemed delayed and I feared the program’s continuing implementation had been quashed by the pharmaceutical industry lobby and its friends as was a 2013 initiative to provide the public with average retail drug prices. The wait was worth it.
Although restricted to the two specific Medicare populations mentioned above comprising some 70% of all Medicare beneficiaries, the database is unique in that the names and other identifying information about individual prescribers are disclosed to the public. Although the drug companies themselves know who is prescribing their products, to my knowledge, this degree of transparency for the public is unique – and therefore doubly valuable. The top 25 opioid prescribers to this population are listed below. Continue reading “Medicare Updates Its Prescription Drug Utilization Database.”
Governor Bevin Continues To Block UofL Board of Trustees.
Recommendations for a path forward.
In an exercise of stunning hypocrisy, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin warned the remaining former UofL Board of Trustees members that should they meet against his advice, that anything they do will be invalid because they are illegally composed in terms of race, gender, and political party registration. He obviously disagrees with the decision of Circuit Court Judge Philip Shepherd who granted a temporary injunction against the dissolution of the former UofL Board which Bevin replaced with 10 obviously hand-picked new appointees. The Governor has a right to disagree and the ability to appeal the judicial decision in an unthreatening prescribed manner. However, essentially giving Bevin or Ramsey-friendly former trustees an excuse not to show up is a disturbing way to proceed and does not inspire confidence that the Governor is not being driven by the political motivation he ascribes to others. [Some of the former board were apparently listening. See below for today’s new developments.]
Show me a legally empaneled Board –any Board.
There is little doubt that the several statutes defining a required composition of the controlling boards of the state’s various academic entities has been much ignored for some time and by several governors. I shared my opinion earlier that the entire system of University Board appointments is irretrievably broken and needs to be replaced in its entirety. If the governor is serious about his concerns, he needs to examine the current composition of all the relevant Boards, and to deem those out of compliance illegally constituted as well. Governor, I believe you have been badly advised. By your own words and logic, your own Governor’s Postgraduate Nominating Committee that you recently largely reconstituted, is on its very face more illegally constituted that of the UofL Board you compel to sit on their hands as their University burns. By your own words and logic, any of your Nominating Committee’s actions are equally illegal and invalid– including the nomination of the ten UofL trustees you recently attempted to seat. The advice you have been given allows a reasonable person to perceive your motives to be more politically driven than in the name of efficiency, and makes your pronouncements sound less than gubernatorial. Let me explain. Continue reading “Governor Bevin Continues To Block UofL Board of Trustees.”