Price-gouging Maker of EpiPen Literally Said That Critics Can Go Fuck Themselves (gizmodo.com)

Back in August of 2016, the pharmaceutical company Mylan came under fire for jacking up prices of the EpiPen from $57 in 2007 to roughly $600 in 2016. The public backlash has been significant. Gizmodo adds: But the chairman of Mylan has a message for any critics: Go fuck yourself. Well, at least that's what we think he said. The New York Times has a new article about the fact that prices for the live-saving allergy medication haven't actually come down since last year. And the article has a rather strange way of describing the attitude of Mylan chairman Robert Coury. This is how the New York Times describes Coury's reaction to critics of Mylan's price gouging: "Mr. Coury replied that he was untroubled. He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves. Critics in Congress and on Wall Street, he said, should do the same. And regulators at the Food and Drug Administration? They, too, deserved a round of anatomically challenging self-fulfillment."

Comments

Re:That's difficult to do

[tchdab1]

The readily available components for this - a one-dose vial of epinephrine and an appropriate syringe - costs less than $10, less than $5 if you shop around. People are reluctant to use those because it's more complex and cumbersome than an epipen, but they should. Especially backup doses.
And items like this the USA should just declare eminent domain and manufacture/distribute them at cost. This goes for any patented medicine not made available in sufficient quantity and at cost with not more than reasonable profit.

Re: Government should just drop the product.

[OhPlz]

Good luck. The others tend to be out of stock or pulled from the market due to dosage problems.

Re:Government should just drop the product.

[Pascoea]

How does that address the patent issue?

My point was that the maker of the linked device obviously figured out a way around the EpiPen patent.

I am 100% behind patent reform, the system needs work, I get that. But the inventor of the EpiPen device actually did create a better way for people to inject themselves, I think that deserves patent protection. But now, that patent (assuming its this one) is 10 years old, probably about time for that device to become public domain.

In my googling I came up with this interesting article, explaining why they feel that patents aren't the issue here. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016... (I don't know a thing about ipwatchdog, up to you if you take the article at face value or not. Their points seemed valid.)

There's a simple answer to this...

[whitroth]

Nationalize the pharmaceutical industry.

And go back to 1997, and BAN ALL C(ONSUMER_TARGETED ADVERTISING OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. They spend *billions* on that, and what, you're supposed to tell your doctor what to prescribe?

With all the mergers, they're spending a lot less on actual research. And the research they are doing - a year or two ago, India refused to grant a patent to a major drug, because it was no advance at all on the existing drug... that was about to go out of patent.

Hell, go look at the wikipedia entry on quinene, for malaria - how much it costs to make, and the price in the US.

That's their big research. Basic research? Try universities, a lot of whom get funding for that... from the biggest and best (IMO) medical and bioscientific research organization in the world: the US NIH.

Re:Can Congress nullify a patent?

[Holi]

http://www.ipprospective.com/c...