Sen. Manchin stays silent on EpiPen hikes by daughter’s drug company

As a pharmaceutical company run by U.S. Sen. They at risk for a serious reaction – anaphylactic shock. The syringes expire after a year.

“The company added: “(Prices have) changed over time to better reflect important product features and the value the product provides.

Mylan is the latest drugmaker to provoke congressional ire for steep price hikes.

“We certainly have seen other high-profile incidents of pharmaceutical companies that have taken a hit both to their reputation and their stock price for engaging in unscrupulous practices”.

“I have heard from numerous residents in Minnesota that recent price increases for an EpiPen could result in them losing access to this life-saving technology”, Paulsen wrote. However, officials said in a statement that they realize more needs to be done to help patients with high-deductible plans. “This current and ongoing shift has presented new challenges for consumers, and now they are bearing more of the cost” of the devices, the statement said.

The statement recommended that people review their coverage.

In a statement to The Huffington Post last week, Mylan noted it has donated 650,000 EpiPen and EpiPen Jrauto-injectors to about half of all US schools and said the vast majority of commercially insured patients received the EpiPen for free. One cheaper product remains on the market, Adrenaclick.

The EpiPen controversy follows a similar controversy past year, when Martin Shkreli, chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, drastically raised the price of a key cancer and AIDS drug. While the drug contained in EpiPens is cheap, the device itself, which is created to be user-friendly and immediately dispense the correct dosage of the drug, is exorbitantly expensive. Generic maker Teva has permission to launch a version but hasn’t gotten regulatory approval yet.

He bought the rights to Daraprim in August a year ago for $55 million (£41.5 million).

Q: Is there another alternative?

“The expiration date is usually a year, at most 14 months (after purchase)”, she said.

Q: Why is there such a furor now?

The company has come under fire in recent days over the cost of the popular EpiPen, the most common epinephrine injector on the market.

Mylan and other drug companies point to insurance plans that force consumers to pay an ever-larger share of drug costs out of pocket, and note that few health insurers and drug-benefit managers pay a drug’s list price because of rebates and discounts.

As outrageous as the EpiPen increases seem, Rea says they aren’t that unusual and are getting attention now because parents are stocking up before back to school and are increasingly facing higher out-of-pocket costs due to higher deductibles and cost sharing.