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EPIC EPIPEN PRICE GOUGING
By Clay Jones, August 25, 2016
I’m allergic to something but I haven’t figured out what it is yet. Every six months or so I break out all over. I don’t know if it’s from alcohol, laundry detergent, patchouli on a skanky girl? I just don’t know but Benadryl always takes care of it, knocks me out and I have a great nap. But my life isn’t threatened by a bee sting or from whiffing a peanut. Thankfully, Benadryl is sold over the counter and isn’t expensive and it taste kinda like a Five-Hour Energy…which I’m pretty sure doesn’t make me break out.
For people whose lives can be threatened by an allergic reaction, the Epipen can be a life saver. Since neither I or my son ever needed the product, I had to do some research before creating my cartoon.
The pen used to be sold in a single pack and it cost around $50 to $60. Then doctors recommended buying them in pairs since one pen might turn out to be a dud, so the company that marketed the pens started to sell them only in pairs. The pen has a shelf life of about a year so eventually you’ll have to buy them again. That expensive pen you bought may not have even been used if you managed to get through the year without encountering chunky peanut butter.
Then Mylan came along, bought the company, registered in the Netherlands (tax reasons, yo), and jacked the price up 500% so a pair of pens will cost you around $600. Their CEO, Heather Bresch, daughter of United States senator from West Virginia Joe Manchen, had her salary increased from $2 million to $18 million. Yowzah!
What’s a price-gouging corporate CEO to do under such public outrage? Blame Obamacare. Never mind that it only costs the corporation around a dollar to create each pen, and that the price in Canada is around $50, or that Mylan was actually trying to jack the price even higher after a competitor folded.
Bresch does have one defender. Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli, the CEO who jacked up the price of Daraprim over 5,000%, believes the Epipen’s price is too low.
Once upon a time the leeches were thought to be a cure and not the CEOs of major pharmaceutical companies.
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