WASHINGTON – A group of 17 U.S. senators, including Minnesotans Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, have raised new questions about Mylan Pharmaceuticals' profit margins on its EpiPen epinephrine auto-injector.
In a Nov. 1 letter to Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, the senators called for the company to provide detailed breakdowns on pricing of the product for the uninsured, Medicare and Medicaid recipients, people with employer-provided health insurance and those insured individually as part of the Affordable Care Act.
The request comes amid charges of price gouging that saw the cost of an EpiPen two-pack rise from $99 in 2008 to $608 in 2016. The company has said it nets just $50 per EpiPen sold, a calculation that the senators said might have been driven down by an improper deduction of taxes.
Mylan did not post an immediate reaction to the senators' letter on its website. But the company recently agreed to a $465 million payment to the U.S. Justice Department to settle charges that it misclassified EpiPens as a generic product instead of a brand-name device in order to lower the amount of rebates it owed to Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor.
"The settlement terms provide for resolution of all potential rebate liability claims by federal and state governments as to whether the product should have been classified," a Mylan news release said, announcing the settlement.
The company also agreed to enter into a "corporate integrity agreement" with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare.
The company admitted no guilt or wrongdoing.
In a statement to the Star Tribune, Klobuchar said, "Mylan still has many important questions to answer on its price hike on the EpiPen, including its misclassification and how much it has cost the federal government and American taxpayers."
