An open letter to Heather Bresch: What is legal is not always ethical

Dear Ms. Bresch, I couldn’t help but notice the barrage of negative press you’ve received lately regarding the significant price increases in EpiPens. A 461 percent increase since 2007, to be exact. People who require this medication for themselves or their children are up in arms about spending over $600 for a twin pack of autoinjectors. Most of these people have life-threatening anaphylaxis if they are exposed to certain allergens. To them, whether or not they have an EpiPen could mean life or death. Now, I don’t want to bore you with the medical stuff. You are not a clinician; you are a business woman. I know you have likely not broken any laws with your price increases on EpiPen (and, for that matter, metoclopramide, dicyclomine, tolterodine and ursodiol, just to name a few). They were purely business decisions, I’m sure. A CEO who manages to increase her compensation by almost 700 percent over an eight-year span clearly knows how to make good business decisions for herself and her company. And I realize that your company, Mylan, is not alone among pharmaceutical companies in this practice of inexplicable price hikes. These hikes on prescription medications far exceed inflationary price increases, and are placed on old medications that have not improved a bit over the years. As Rodney Whitlock, a consultant with the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing puts it, if other companies took the same approach, “… Ford would be selling the Pinto for $84,000.” Continu...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Meds Medications Source Type: blogs