NY Opens Probe Into EpiPen Sales To Schools

“No child’s life should be put at risk because a parent, school, or health-care”.

NY state has launched an antitrust probe into Mylan’s sale of the EpiPen anti-allergy injector to local school systems, New York’s attorney general announced Tuesday.

A Mylan spokeswoman defended the practice of giving free EpiPens to schools, pointing out there are no purchase restrictions.

Mylan NV’s (NASDAQ:MYL) 400 percent price hike for the EpiPen has raised the ire of consumers that depend on the product’s life-saving capabilities.

Schneiderman’s office said it had already subpoenaed documents from Mylan.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday urged federal regulators to probe whether Mylan violated antitrust laws when it allegedly required schools to sign noncompete contracts. At the same time, CEO Heather Bresch’s salary soared over 600 percent to almost $19 million in 2015. It added, “The positive impact of the program has been demonstrated by the hundreds of uses of EpiPen Auto-Injectors provided through the EpiPen4Schools program during anaphylactic events in schools”.

Various companies have come under fire for hiking the price of life-saving drugs, which has come to symbolize corporate greed. Hillary Clinton weighed in earlier this month when she outlined a set of proposals to crack down on “unjustified” increases on prices for older treatments. The move was blasted by members of Congress who called it a public-relations maneuver.

A preliminary review by the Office of the Attorney General revealed that Mylan Pharmaceuticals may have inserted potentially anticompetitive terms into its EpiPen sales contracts with numerous local school systems.

The probe isn’t the first sign of alarm in NY over the EpiPen controversy.

Meanwhile, a NY legislator introduced a bill to authorize pharmacists to dispense little-known and cheaper generic epinephrine auto-injectors under a brand-specific prescription without having to get a new prescription from the doctor. The city’s pension funds own 1.1 million Mylan shares valued at about $45 million.