Epi-Pens, The Unaffordable Necessity
The price of Epi-Pens has skyrocketed in recent months, with no reasonable explanation or cause as to why this happened.
To The Next President,
The exponentially rising Epinephrine prices are taking a huge toll on Americans; for some they are even keeping the life-saving medication far out of reach. This is unacceptable and needs to be resolved.
According to Huffington Post, 23% of americans 19-63 are underinsured and need to purchase medical supplies on their own. This amounts to above 31 million people unable to purchase medications or devices that could very well be necessary to keep oneself alive.
One major example of recently increasing prices of medication is MyLan rising the prices of EpiPen for no good reason. Mylan, the pharmaceutical company which has a virtual monopoly on EpiPens, has risen the price by 400% since 2007, according to forbes.com. A dollar’s worth of a generic, life-saving drug which empties the pockets of millions of people should be easily obtainable and widely available. The very obvious reason that this is such an outrage is that people prone to severe allergic reactions will decide that their budget can’t fit in the enormous price for the Epipen, and one day will need it in a life-threatening situation but won’t have it.
“Price and access exist in a balance, and we believe we have struck that balance,” Bresch, the CEO of Mylan stated before court. This poor attempt to an excuse leaves no room for discussion, they have lost their minds. To raise the price by so much with no real reasoning whatsoever and an excuse as unreasonable as such, Mylan has proven to just be after profit because they know that there would be no consequences for their actions, with there being no other companies which produce epinephrine injectors that are capable of taking their sales away. This means that they could continue to raise the prices to an even more outrageous high than they are now. While these are all exemplary examples of the toll that this ruthless company with a medical monopoly has taken on american families, at least their executive chairman and chief executive officer collectively receive an income of over $18,500,000 yearly!
A way to solve this issue would be to split Mylan into multiple companies in order to make the market competitive so that the obnoxious company wouldn’t be able to raise prices by 400% just because they can, (not because of supply and demand or anything).
Sincerely,
Ricky
