EpiPen owner Mylan generates a lot of money by gouging prices on life-saving medications. Mylan’s CEO Heather Bresch makes a reported $19 million a year and, just like her male counterparts, is a condescending dick who should probably be brought up on serious criminal charges. According to Stat’s Ike Swetlitz, when West Virginia moved to save money by pushing doctors to prescribe a cheaper alternative to EpiPen, Mylan got their lawyers out of the gladiator barracks they must keep them in.
The case played out in West Virginia when the state tried to save taxpayers an estimated $1 million by encouraging doctors to prescribe an alternative to the EpiPen. In a 2015 lawsuit that escaped public attention until now, Mylan sued the state to halt the changes.
Hundreds of pages of court documents examined by STAT detail an effort by Mylan to compel the state to give the EpiPen coveted “preferred’’ status among its Medicaid drug offerings, which West Virginia had decided to give to a different epinephrine auto-injector instead.
The “preferred status” mandates that Medicaid pay for the EpiPen device without any additional approvals needed—thus making it the go to option for prescribers. According to Stat, this lawsuit didn’t succeed but the competing company—Auvi-Q, owned by Sanofi—left the market a year later after a recall of their product, giving Mylan’s EpiPen the coveted “preferred drug” status by default. The lawsuit Mylan filed against West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources can be found here.
Mylan has said that they spent $1 billion on “upgrading” the EpiPen, in such a way that not a single expert has been able to figure out where and on what this supposed billion was actually spent on. Here’s a guess … lawyers.
The recall of Mylan’s competitor led to Sanofi abandoning the ephedrine market all-together. However, with Mylan’s monopoly under question, companies like Sanofi are back, along with CVS, trying to compete.