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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the this-is-what-happens-when-you-get-greedy dept.

Just months after an outcry about a price hike for the life-saving "Epipen", CVS pharmacies will begin carrying a new generic injector at a cutthroat price:

Pharmaceutical giant CVS announced Thursday that it has partnered with Impax Laboratories to sell a generic epinephrine auto-injector for $109.99 for a two-pack—a dramatic cut from Mylan's Epipen two-pack prices, which list for more than $600 as a brand name and $300 as a generic.

The lower-cost auto-injector, a generic form of Adrenaclick, is available starting today nationwide in the company's more than 9,600 pharmacies. Its price resembles that of EpiPen's before Mylan bought the rights to the life-saving devices back in 2007 and raised the price repeatedly, sparking outcry. [...] The price of $109.99 for the alternative applies to those with and without insurance, CVS noted. And Impax is also offering a coupon to reduce the cost to just $9.99 for qualifying patients. [...] Meanwhile, backlash to Mylan's price hikes continue. This week, Cigna, a top health insurance company, said that it will no longer cover Mylan's brand name EpiPen—it will only cover the generic, which was rolled out in December.

Previously: AllergyStop: $50 EpiPen is Production-Ready but...
Mylan Overcharged U.S. Government on EpiPens


Original Submission

Related Stories

EpiPen's Price Increased 400% since 2008 97 comments

EpiPen's price has ballooned about 400% since 2008, rising from about a $100 list price to $500 today. The EpiPen is one of the most important life-saving medical innovations for people with severe food allergies—which affect as many as 15 million Americans and 1 in 13 children in the United States. But its price has exploded over the last decade despite few upgrades to the product itself. The product's lack of competitors is likely a significant driver of the costs. [...] [The] EpiPen enjoys a near-monopoly on the market with annual sales of more than $1.3 billion and nearly 90% U.S. market share.

At Fortune, NYT, The Hill.


Original Submission

AllergyStop: $50 EpiPen is Production-Ready but... 35 comments

AlterNet reports

The [EpiPen], which millions of Americans depend on, was invented in the 1970s by engineer Sheldon Kaplan[PDF], who died seven years ago in modest surroundings amid obscurity. But Kaplan's patent made its way into [the] Netherlands-based drug maker Mylan, which, since 2007, has jacked up the price of the spring-loaded injector from $57 a shot to $300.

[...] The high price [...] caught the attention of Dr. Douglas McMahon. The 38-year-old allergy specialist in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been thinking about how to improve on the EpiPen and to do so in a way that's affordable.

[...] McMahon saw that the EpiPen device was not only overpriced for what it does but also was too big to be easily carried in a pocket. For the past couple of years, he has been tinkering with injection-device components in his lab. And the result of his work is AllergyStop [1], an injection prototype that's small enough to fit on a key chain. McMahon claimed his device is as effective as the EpiPen and can be marketed and sold for about $50.

But, even though McMahon's device has been production-ready for the past two months, the steps he must take to get the device approved will cost him about $2 million and it will potentially take him years to go through all the hurdles required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for possible approval of his invention.

[1] All content is behind scripts. archive.li will run those for you.

Previously:
EpiPen's Price Increased 400% since 2008


Original Submission

Mylan Overcharged U.S. Government on EpiPens 19 comments

If you're going to overcharge the U.S. government, you don't want to get caught:

Mylan NV for years overcharged the U.S. Medicaid health program to buy its EpiPen shot, the government said Wednesday, despite being told that it needed to give bigger discounts under the law. From 2011 to 2015, the joint state-federal program for the poor spent about $797 million on EpiPens, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, said in a letter Wednesday. That included rebates of about 13 percent, but the U.S. should have been getting a larger discount of at least 23.1 percent.

While the agency didn't say exactly how much Mylan had overcharged, the amount could be substantial. Under law, companies are required to give [Medicaid] back any price increases they take on brand drugs above the rate of inflation, in addition to the 23.1 percent discount. Mylan, after acquiring the drug in 2007, has raised the price of EpiPen by about sixfold, to over $600 for a package of two. The government has in the past "expressly told Mylan that the product is incorrectly classified," CMS said in the letter, which came in response to an inquiry by Congress. "This incorrect classification has financial consequences for the amount that federal and state governments spend because it reduces the amount of quarterly rebates Mylan owes for EpiPen."

Previously:
EpiPen's Price Increased 400% since 2008
AllergyStop: $50 EpiPen is Production-Ready but...


Original Submission

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:25AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:25AM (#453722)

    Air is free, why not epipen is free?
    Water is free, why not epipen is free?
    Sunlight is free, why not epipen is free?
    Sidewalk is free, why not epipen is free?
    Road is free, why not epipen is free?
    Freeway is free, why not epipen is free?

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:37AM (#453723)

      Pay for with your basic income, lazy freeloader.

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:16AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:16AM (#453727) Journal

      Air is free

      That's because plants produce it as waste product, and plants just happen to be there. Air stops to be free when you want to have it in unusual locations (under water, in space).

      Water is free

      Really? Then what am I paying for with my water bill?

      Sunlight is free

      Yes, because the sun is just there, shining.

      Sidewalk is free

      No, it isn't. It's paid for with your taxes.

      Road is free

      No, it isn't. It's paid for with your taxes.

      Freeway is free

      No, it isn't. It's paid for with your taxes.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:32AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:32AM (#453731)

        No, it isn't. It's paid for with your taxes.

        Tax from you, give to me.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:16PM (#453811)

        > No, it isn't. It's paid for with your taxes.

        No, it isn't. It's paid for by your parent's taxes.

        FTFY

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:44AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:44AM (#453724) Journal
    The whole story of the EpiPen seems to have lots of patent disputes. A quick look at the history of the EpiPen [wikipedia.org] shows that the original design was produced in the mid-1970s and was approved by the FDA in 1987. Any patents that Sheldon Kaplan or his compatriots at Survival Technology might have held for that original EpiPen design must have been in the public domain for at least a decade, even with the most optimistic estimates for period of patent restrictions, and the design is still FDA-approved I should think. What stops any generics manufacturer from creating a 1980s-style EpiPen for a very small fraction of the cost (probably closer to $10 or $25 rather than $100), given that the patents have expired? Certainly the newer EpiPen designs in wide use today are better, but are they really so much better? The existence of a generic epinephrine autoinjector that was good enough for most purposes might well have prevented Mylan from engaging in their absolutely ruthless price gouging ($600 for a device that costs them $35 to make?).
    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:32AM

      by davester666 (155) on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:32AM (#453732)

      They don't because of:
      -fear of being sued by Mylan for newer patents for a similar, but slightly different/improvd pen
      -fear of being sued by customers because the old pen isn't quite as reliable as newer pens

      • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday January 14 2017, @12:59PM

        by FakeBeldin (3360) on Saturday January 14 2017, @12:59PM (#453775) Journal

        - fear of being sued by Mylan for newer patents for a similar, but slightly different/improvd pen

        If you take the existing, expired patent and implement that, suing seems... unwise.
        Even if you make some updates on the fly - the basic premise of a patent is that it's not obvious to someone skilled in the arts.
        Now if you take something that is public domain, and implement that with obvious improvements to someone skilled in the arts, and you get sued for infringing a newer patent, that will unavoidably will cast doubts on the validity of the new patent.

        Basically, saying "you implemented an old expired patent but made some improvements along the way - now it's a knock-off of our new cash-cow patent, which is completely not obvious and very ingenious" would be such a dumb move by them, that I genuinely believe it'd be sufficient grounds for stockholders to sue.

        • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday January 14 2017, @10:06PM

          by davester666 (155) on Saturday January 14 2017, @10:06PM (#453925)

          No, Mylan likely has follow-on patents with improvements on the original design. And they've got millions and millions in profit they can spend to sue the much smaller generic manufacturer delaying the introduction of the generic device (and the generic manufacturer has to fund the lawsuit with money from other products). And it takes years to resolve the lawsuit, and if the generic manufacturer loses, it can wipe them out completely.

          Mylan stockholders won't sue because the result of the lawsuit doesn't really matter. Mylan makes more money regardless of the outcome, as if they lose, they aren't out any significant (for them) money, but the generic manufacturer had to fund the lawsuit (so they can't put that money into production), and possibly even not produce the competing device until the lawsuit is resolved.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:16PM (#453810)
        The old design still has FDA approval, and should have no problems legally. Mylan would have no standing to sue given that one obviously cannot be violating patents for making something for which the patents are expired. If the old design were problematic then one would think that Survival Technology and its successors would have been on the receiving end of lawsuits throughout the 20 years that their patent was valid, just like Merck and Vioxx.
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:02PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:02PM (#453870) Journal

        fear of being sued by customers because the old pen isn't quite as reliable as newer pens

        What's the precedent for this, keeping in mind this is a combination of a drug and mechanical device?

        If this fear was real, why would anyone make generics?

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 14 2017, @10:21PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Saturday January 14 2017, @10:21PM (#453930)

      I think I heard that the original Epipen design was discontinued because it used something like a CFC propellant, which became problematic with environmental regulations. Seems like it would hardly be noteworthy to just use a different propellant, but FDA approval can apparently be very finicky, and I strongly suspect regulatory capture makes life extra difficult for any upstarts.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @04:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15 2017, @04:23AM (#454001)
        As far as I can tell the EpiPen is not a gas jet autoinjector (such designs have so far only been widely used for administration of insulin, not epinephrine), and it works just via a spring that pushes a syringe plunger when it is used, so there is no propellant gas of any kind inside one.
        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:12PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:12PM (#454155)

          Perhaps that's the new design? I don't know, only passing on hearsay.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:30PM (#453823)

    Premise -- some people were hurt due to Mylan's pricing -- they needed an Epipen and one wasn't available due to cost. Now, the market has come up with a suitable response so this manufactured-crisis appears to be over.

    What if pharma price increases above an inflation-corrected % had to be announced six(?) months before they could take effect. This would give competitors time to tool up and get generics or other substitutes on the market before any predatory pricing could affect lives.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @07:46PM (#453884)

      What if pharma price increases above an inflation-corrected % had to be announced six(?) months before they could take effect.

      In the DPRK price changes are planned 5 years in advance.