Regardless of what Mylan told Congress or anyone else investigating the myriad dubious dealings of the big pharmaceutical company, their insane price hikes of the life-saving EpiPen drug and injector hurt patients’ pocketbooks. A new study delved into the actual numbers to destroy the mythology Mylan has been trying to create.
Between 2007 and 2014, the average out-of-pocket spending per insured EpiPen-user jumped 123 percent. During that time, Mylan raised the list price of EpiPens from around $50 per pen to a whopping $609 per two-pack. In 2007, the year Mylan obtained the rights to EpiPen, the average patient spent around $33.8 out-of-pocket for a two-pack. By 2014, the average spending rose to $75.5 per two-pack, according to the new analysis published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Mylan has made ridiculously contradictory and false statements about everything from the $600 price tag to their fake “re-engineering” of the EpiPen’s device. It’s hard to believe anything they say and now we can all add this new lie to the pile.
To get to the real numbers, authors Kao-Ping Chua and Rena Conti of the University of Chicago dug through insurance claim records of 191.2 million patients between 2007 and 2014. Though not all of EpiPen users are insured, the records accounted for 70 percent of all EpiPen prescriptions—so a solid chunk of Mylan’s overall customers.
[...]
But, as the list price increased, more people saw higher bills. The fraction of insured patients that had to shell out more than $100 out-of-pocket jumped from 3.9 percent in 2007 to 18 percent in 2014. The proportion paying more than $250 also rose dramatically, from 0.1 percent to 7.4 percent.
In all, the average total out-of-pocket spending on EpiPens per patient per year rose from $123.9 in 2007 to $468.7 in 2014.
Hopefully the new generic releases by CVS and others will help to economically punish Mylan since our present government is unlikely to get around to doing it.
The full research letter can be found here.