Anytime that any company pulls this shit, they lose all patent rights to that drug or equipment, and the US FDA will finance a competing company to sell it at cost.

Competition? If the GOP wants free market, we will use free markets to compete the hell out of those criminals.

fine them 3x the revenue they made on the drugs for being a monopoly

revoke ALL their patents not just the ones on that drug

But, I do enjoy the mental image.

anti trust law allows for triple damages for monopolistic practices

i dont think there would be any constitutional prohibtion to revoking patents

is no longer viable

You would think these CEO's would understand that by now

But pricing power is just too tempting and lucrative

she is the senator in my home state and I have always admired her.

Last edited Sat Sep 3, 2016, 10:30 PM - Edit history (1)

I hope he feels the heat. His daughter is a crook. He has run against President Obama in every election. He might as well go over to the dark side.

Isn't this capitalism and free enterprise? How dare they interfere with the workings of the market! Outrageous that our government is now sticking their noses into what should be a business decision. Doesn't this smack of some form of control on a system that is built on the premise of market demand and getting the most for your product? Aren't the makers more entitled to the profits due them?The stockholders are due their share and deserve it for the risks they take in investing in such companies.

If one can't afford the pen, perhaps they should get another job and pull themselves up a bit higher by their bootstraps.

One for mom, dad, the kid and the school health office. I called my senators today to ask for action.

There's the important point: The Epipen is a brand name of an autoinjector. PR has made it seem like it's somehow unique, the only way of administering this drug.

It's not.

Moreover, it's not the only manufacturer of autoinjectors that administer epinephrine. However, the others are less well known.

It's rather like having Kleenex or Totino's raise their prices for tissue or frozen pizza by 400% next month. There are other brands of tissue and frozen pizza. The market domination by the Epipen means that responders would have to learn there are alternatives, become familiar with them, and purchase them; manufacturers would have to ramp up production. All of this would severely weaken the Epipen maker's market dominance and profits.

It so dominated the market that a lot of schools train people like teachers in how to use that particular brand-name and no other. The schools can change their training powerpoint presentations and buy the competition's product.

But the first step is to realize that the Epipen is like Ford. It's a brand name for a class of devices. Even if it works marginally better, it's replaceable. The calls for investigations, etc., are pretty much PR and politics. If I went to buy a model car with automatic transmission and found it cost 4x the price of one with manual, I'd be "stick shift rules." Not, "I demand that my senator launch an investigation in which great government resources can be used to hurt a company, however large, just for the sake of hurting that company."

What about all the other drugs that are prohibitively expensive in the US, but reasonably priced elsewhere?

Go over to the EU or anywhere else in the developed world and they either regulate drug costs or they don't award patents the same way we do. Thus, pharmaceutical companies here charge whatever the market will bear and insurance companies negotiate the prices down some, but not enough. The high prices in the unrestrained US market effectively subsidize lower prices in other countries.

price gouge the US to subsidize their own health care.

Meridian Medical, located in the St. Louis metro area, makes the atropine autoinjectors - devices like Epi-pens but filled with a different drug - the Army gives you in case you go through a nerve gas attack. Pfizer owns the plant now, but it's gone through quite a few changes of ownership. It's the only company in America that makes these.

It appears to me a person with a machine that fills autoinjectors, and that had a warehouse full of empty ones, could figure out how to get his or her hands on a few barrels of epinephrine and a truckload of empty autoinjector-sized boxes. And it further appears to me the Army could declare these things critical to national security and buy the factory that makes them...

The epi costs a buck.
The pens were developed by the military in the 50s.

What did this company do on their own?

This is taxpayer abuse!

The autoinjector itself, a bit more.

Autoinjectors were developed by the Army. There's a variety of them on the market that aren't Epipens.

What the company did on its own is adopt the technology and then convince everybody that it was the only real manufacturer of autoinjectors. For many, epipen is a generic word like kleenex, coke, or sharpie. With the difference that all but the exceptionally dimwitted know "coke" can be any cola (in the right context), most stores produce generic tissues that aren't Kleenex (tm), sharpies may be made by Sharpie but there are other brands of fine-point permanent markers. (Okay, Coca-Cola is reclaiming it's "coke" trademark a bit better, but if you asked for a "coke" when I was a kid and got Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola nobody would think twice that they were mis-served.)

The corruption is beyond belief . They need to put in a federal penitentiary, enough is enough .

the cost of making it was barely any higher over that time span?

Perp walk for CEO is a good mental image. I am so tired of this crap.


Investigate them! Throw someone in jail! Sponsor purchases from the EU or Canada if they are cheaper there! Drive ém out of business.

And I carry one, so I am putting myself on the front line.

Why she doesn't live in the Netherlands, where the company is registered to avoid taxation, and
How hard it was to acquire her MBA from WVU.