A lawsuit filed in an Ohio county court this week has accused Mylan Pharmaceuticals of violating consumer protection laws by lifting the price of its EpiPen injections. EpiPen is a self-administered epinephrine injection used to treat life-threatening allergies to things like peanuts, other foods and bee stings. People with these allergies must carry an EpiPen with them at all times in case of accidental exposure to their allergen. Since Mylan acquired the EpiPen product in 2007, the retail price of the injections has shot up from less than $100 to more than $600, with Elsevier’s Gold Standard Drug Database estimating that the price has increased by 450 per cent since 2004.
Pricing debate
‘[The] Defendant has a legal duty to set a fair, affordable and reasonable [price] and not hold consumers hostage by forcing them to pay exorbitant prices for its medically necessary product,’ reads the Ohio lawsuit, which is seeking class action status. A second lawsuit filed in Michigan, which will also seek to form a class action, has taken aim at the fact that EpiPen is only available for purchase in packs of two. ‘Defendants have misstated the science regarding, and regulatory framework governing, EpiPens in order to require consumers to buy extra, unneeded EpiPens, which are likely to go to waste, at an inflated cost,’ says the complaint. Mylan has previously defended the higher price of EpiPens, saying that it has made considerable improvements to the product since acquiring it and claiming that it recoups less than half the list price for EpiPens.
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