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Is Mylan’s New Generic EpiPen Variant Really Half-Priced? The Epinephrine Twin Injector Pack’s $300 Price Tag Is Still Massively Inflated

By Patrick Frye
Published on: 03:04 PST, Dec 17, 2016

Mylan has launched a new variant of EpiPen. The generic variant will be sold at half the price of the branded option. Though the generic and supposedly cheaper variant is priced at $300 for a twin pack of epinephrine injectors, it is still way costlier than the original price of the product back when Mylan acquired the rights in 2007.

Pharmaceutical company Mylan that has been embroiled in Congressional inquiries for jacking up the price of EpiPen, an emergency allergy treatment, has started selling, what it refers to as a generic version of the life-saving injector at half the price of the branded option.

Though the new generic variant has been priced at $300, which many news publications reported as “a more than 50% discount,” the new variant will cost more than three times as much as it did when Mylan acquired the rights in 2007. Incidentally, the company will still make millions of dollars for a product that delivers a dose of a generic drug, reported CBS News. Moreover, Mylan never played any role in developing the EpiPen, but merely owns the right to sell the same, not to mention, at a highly inflated price.

Mylan NV confirmed that the generic variant of the life-saving injections will come in a two pack, just like the original one. The generic version is expected to be available at retail pharmacies starting next week. Just like the branded version, the generic variant of EpiPen will be filled with epinephrine. It will counter the effects of a severe allergic reaction. EpiPen has become synonymous with the epinephrine injectors that parents of children with peanut allergies rely on to ward off life-threatening anaphylactic shock.

It isn’t immediately clear what Mylan has changed between the two variants besides the price. Moreover, it is not clear why buyers would still consider buying the branded option, especially when it currently costs upwards of $600 for a pack of two injectors. The company has confirmed that the generic variant will be indistinguishable from the branded version. Everything will be identical, except for the presence of “EpiPen” from the label on the generic variant.

After Mylan secured the rights to manufacture EpiPen, it straight away began jacking up the price of the life-saving injectors. EpiPen’s price has risen by more than 480 percent since 2009. A single EpiPen used to cost just $56 back in 2007. However, Mylan steadily increased the price exponentially. Today, a two-injector pack costs $608. Shockingly, the actual cost of the complete injector, including the live-saving medication inside, doesn’t exceed a couple of dollars.

Industry experts point out that Mylan has two reasons to launch a generic variant that costs about half of the branded EpiPen. After Mylan faced intense backlash from multiple sections of the society for indulging in profit mongering, the company announced it would offer a generic variant that wouldn’t cost as much. During a Congressional panel hearing, Mylan’s CEO Heather Bresch, who became a multi-millionaire owing to the EpiPen’s price rise, blamed the $600 price tag on, “an outdated and complex system for pricing drugs.”

Besides appeasing schools and parents of children with severe allergies, who have to stock multiple units of EpiPen for emergencies, Mylan launched the generic variant to take on the competitors that realized a golden opportunity to offer their equivalent products to parents who never considered anything beyond EpiPen. Quite recently, Pharmaceutical Company Kaléo announced they would be re-launching a cheaper alternative to EpiPen, called Auvi-Q. The company’s product is reportedly more compact, advanced, and safer to administer than an EpiPen. The product was abruptly yanked off the shelves last year by the makers themselves citing manufacturing problems, but now they have an opportunity.

Questioning Mylan’s generic EpiPen, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has been a critic of pharmaceutical profiteering, said “This isn’t a discount. It’s a PR move,” reported the Los Angeles Times.

EpiPen has been Mylan’s cash cow, accounting for more than a billion dollars in sales. Hence it is apparent the company would try its best to ensure EpiPen’s market share doesn’t erode.

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]

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