The print version of USA Today‘s pharma-friendly EpiPen headline (8/3/16).
“Under Fire, Mylan to Offer Generic EpiPen for 50% Less,” was USA Today‘s headline (8/29/16).
That depends on when you start the clock.
The drug-maker announced that it would be selling an unbranded version of the lifesaving anti-allergy device for $300 for a two-pack. That’s actually a little more than a 50 percent reduction from the current list price; a two-pack of EpiPens generally sells for $608.
But that’s the recently jacked-up price that sparked the outrage that forced Mylan to offer a generic alternative. A year ago, an EpiPen set was going for $461. That would make the $300 price a 35 percent reduction, not 50 percent.
EpiPen two-pack (photo: Intropin/Wikimedia)
Even that makes the generic price sound like more of a bargain than it is. As recently as July 2013, you could buy two for $264—making the new generic price a 14 percent increase.
And if you go back to 2007, when Mylan acquired the rights to the EpiPen brand, the list price then for two devices was $94. That’s $109 in 2016 dollars—so, on that basis, Mylan’s generic EpiPen is actually a 175 percent price hike.
You don’t need time travel to make the generic EpiPen a bad deal, though; you just need to travel across the border into Canada, where a single pen retails for about $120 in Canadian money, which is about $92 in US currency. In France, where the device is made by a company Mylan recently bought, a twin-pack sells for about $85—or 28 percent of Mylan’s new “discount” price.
Raising prices exorbitantly so that you can present a slightly less extortionate price as a “sale” is a time-honored marketing tradition. USA Today is under no obligation to feature the scam in a headline, however.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. He can be followed on Twitter at @JNaureckas.
Messages to USA Today can be sent here or via Twitter (@USAToday). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
There’s a good overview of the issue on Democracy Now! today:
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/30/our_childrens_lives_depend_on_this?autostart=true
These are some of the sleaziest people I’ve seen recently. And I’ve been watching a lot of Trump.
This is like the Donald without the visceral sarcastic retort that allows one to ameliorate his every idiocy.
The drug is generic; the injection system has been patented and is what this company bought and now profits from. The solution is to nationalize the medicine and its applicator, through a federal declaration of eminent domain, paying these creeps the reasonable current value of their investment. And no more.
No. I don’t think it will happen.
nothing rational will ever happen in america, nothing socially positive either, no one cares for the other, the poor and sick may die, but no one will pay for the funeral
Ingredients for the drug cost Mylan less then a dollar, which means that a two-pack could be sold for $20 and Mylan would still make 1,000% profit. And as Americans must pay $608 for a two-pack that sells for $85 in France, if Obama was not an Empire builder paid actor, surely he could give the top ten managers at Mylan some jail time.
well, don’t forget to add the 2 dollars for the plastic injector – we would not want to be unfair about this, heh i.e. like them. add that the development opf the injector was bankrolled by the department of defense and you have to ask why this is patented at all.
Just about every major pharmaceutical discovery was made in the public sector (with public funds, of course) and handed over to private industry.