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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) reportedly remains interested in launching a 2024 presidential bid on a “No Labels” ticket if President Joe Biden, 81, has a “health scare.” If he enters the race, Manchin would siphon votes from Biden, potentially dooming the president’s reelection campaign. Democrats have raised concerns for months about Biden’s 2024 chances due to poor polling about his age and physical stamina: Redfield & Wilton Strategies: A majority of Democrats are “concerned” about Biden’s ability. YouGov: Fifty-five percent say Biden’s health and age “severely” limit his ability to do the job. NBC News: Most registered voters have “major”...

HEATHER BRESCH, the former president and CEO of the drugmaker Mylan, worked directly with the CEO of Pfizer to keep prices of the company’s EpiPen product artificially high, according to new documents released as part of an ongoing lawsuit.The documents also show Bresch approving a scheme to force customers, captured by the company’s monopoly, to purchase two EpiPens at once, regardless of medical need. The EpiPen is an auto-injectable device that injects epinephrine into the body and can be the difference between life or death for a person suffering a severe allergic reaction.The documents were released as part of an...

President Joe Biden’s United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday stopped executive orders from his predecessor designed to significantly lower prescription drug prices for Americans, including insulin and epinephrine. The new administration will apparently re-evaluate the executive action from President Donald Trump toward the end of March. It remains unclear if it will be reinstated. “The HHS Thursday froze the former Trump administration’s December drug policy that requires community health centers to pass on all their insulin and epinephrine discount savings to patients,” Bloomberg Law reported Thursday. “Centers that don’t pass on the savings wouldn’t qualify...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting consumers to Meridian Medical Technologies’ voluntary recalldisclaimer icon of 13 lots of Mylan’s EpiPen and EpiPen Jr (epinephrine injection) Auto-Injector products used for emergency treatment of severe allergic reactions. This recall is due to the potential that these devices may contain a defective part that may result in the devices’ failure to activate. The recalled product was manufactured by Meridian Medical Technologies and distributed by Mylan Specialty. While the number of reported failures is small, EpiPen products that potentially contain a defective part are being recalled because of the potential for life-threatening...

Shelf Life of an Allergy Auto-Injector May Increase to 2 Years Mylan CEO Heather Bresch has faced a barrage of criticism from lawmakers and the allergy community over the price escalation of EpiPen sets. But a secondary point she raised during her September 21 testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was largely overlooked among those who rely on epinephrine auto-injectors: they may soon last longer. “We hope that within the next 12 months we’ll have approved a new formulation that will extend the shelf life,” Bresch said, while trying to defend the company’s research...

Perhaps this is the reason the price of lifesaving EpiPens increased so dramatically: the single-largest purchaser of the pens in 2015 were taxpayers.The largest source of Mylan's increased revenue came from increased spending from Medicaid and Medicare for the devices. The price of the EpiPens has increased by over 400 percent since Medicaid and Medicare became a larger percentage of EpiPen's revenue. "The majority of Mylan's EpiPen revenue growth came from Medicare and Medicaid," Senator Chuck Grassley told NBC News in a statement after the Iowa Republican's office published an analysis of newly released data on rebates paid by the...

Mylan’s EpiPen Pretax Profits 60% Higher Than Number Told to CongressCompany applied 37.5% tax rate onto the profits it revealed to a House committee hearing last weekMylan CEO Heather Bresch takes her seat on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday prior to testifying before the House Oversight Committee hearing on EpiPen price increases. Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press "> Mylan NV on Monday clarified the profit it said it made from its lifesaving EpiPen drug, days after House members badgered the company’s chief executive to justify the device’s steep price increases. Testifying before a congressional committee last week, CEO...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The highly anticipated trip to Capitol Hill for Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, a Marion County native and daughter of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) who has been under fire for rapid hikes in EpiPen prices, comes this week. Bresch, who lead Mylan’s lobbying efforts to expand the usage of EpiPens which can reverse potentially fatal allergic reactions, was scheduled to testify in front of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday. Prices of EpiPens have climbed by more than 400 percent since 2007 to upwards of $600 for a two-pack. On Tuesday, the...

Mylan to Launch a Lower Cost Generic EpiPenUpdated Sept. 1: Mylan announced on Aug. 29 that it will launch a generic version of its EpiPen at half the cost of the patented original. It plans to introduce a generic two-pack of auto-injectors for $300, compared to the list price of $609 on the branded auto-injector set. Facing relentless pressure from politicians, the media and social media over steep increases on EpiPens, this was the second move Mylan has made on auto-injector pricing in less than a week. Given that the EpiPen brand still has patent protection, the generic announcement...

AllergicLiving: Inside the EpiPen Price Backlash Amid a firestorm of controversy over price hikes on lifesaving EpiPens, drug manufacturer Mylan made a dramatic and unusual move this week – it announced the launch of a lower cost generic replica of its brand-name epinephrine auto-injector. Mylan has been under relentless pressure over the pricing of its EpiPen epineprhine auto-injectors since it surfaced that the list price for a set of two devices reached $609 in May 2016, an increase of more than 500 percent from 2008. To alleviate widespread sticker shock at pharmacy counters, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch’s initial response...

EpiPens, useful medical devices which reverse potentially fatal allergic reactions, have recently quadrupled in price, putting pressure on allergy sufferers and those who care for them. Vox writes that this “tells us a lot about what’s wrong with American health care” – namely that we don’t regulate it enough: The story of Mylan’s giant EpiPen price increase is, more fundamentally, a story about America’s unique drug pricing policies. We are the only developed nation that lets drugmakers set their own prices, maximizing profits the same way sellers of chairs, mugs, shoes, or any other manufactured goods would.Let me ask Vox...

Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton urged Mylan to voluntarily slash the prices of its products while promising that, once she’s elected, her “plan to address exorbitant drug price hikes like these” will be finally implemented. This is a particularly empty promise considering Mylan has donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which was recently revealed to be peddling influence in exchange for cash. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) are also pressuring the manufacturer to disclose more about its pricing. Even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) — whose own daughter, Heather Bresch, serves as Mylan’s CEO — weighed...

Sarah Jessica Parker has stepped down as the face of pharma company Mylan after it emerged the company had raised the price of its life-saving EpiPens by 548 per cent. In a post on Instagram Thursday, the 'Sex and the City' actress said she was 'disappointed, saddened and deeply concerned' and called for Mylan to reverse the price hike. Her announcement came the same day that the beleaguered company - which has faced an outpouring of scorn since the price increase came to light - was challenged by Senator Joe Manchin, father of Mylan CEO Heather Bresch.

A couple of years ago, I got my front teeth knocked out by a combination of bad decisions and gravity. I had never so much as seen the inside of a dentist’s office, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The reality was amazing: I went to a tiny little office a few blocks down from National Review’s palatial penthouse at Buckley Towers, where a lovely young Indian immigrant gazed into my mug and compared some enamels samples like a painter trying to decide whether your living room is actually “Westhighland white” or more of a “Restoration ivory,” and...

Hillary feigns outrage, but everything about this has Democrat fingerprints on it Just like earlier this year with Martin Shkreli and Daraprim, the Internet is full of outrage the past few days over the action of Mylan CEO Heather Fausch to raise the price of the live-saving drug EpiPen to $500 per unit. And as always happens, politicians are getting into the act, particularly Hillary Clinton, who raged that Mylan must reduce the price immediately - as if pharmaceutical companies check with candidates for political office in setting their pricing. But if Hillary really wants to manifest her rage -...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Have you heard about the controversy over the cost of the EpiPen? I bet there's something you don't know about this. Hillary Clinton is out raising hell over the price, the skyrocketing cost of EpiPens. These are things, you shoot epinephrine into somebody that needs to a jolt, peanut allergy or some such thing, this causes an immediate fix for it. The price for these devices has skyrocketed 400% recently, and yet ABC and CBS, in talking about this, have failed to identify the pharmaceutical company involved. And there's a reason why. And NBC as well. ABC,...

Makers of the EpiPen auto-injector said they would offer a 50 percent discount after public outrage over a 500-percent price hike. Hillary Clinton was among those calling for the price reduction – and her supporters were quick to give her all the credit. EpiPen administers a quick dose of epinephrine to counter a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis. The easy-to-use injector is made by West Virginia-based Mylan Pharmaceuticals, which bought the rights to it in 2007. Since then, the price of the EpiPen has skyrocketed, going from $100 to $600. On Thursday, Reuters seemed to give Clinton the...

We have been following the latest melodrama involving a "greedy" Mylan, and numerous "humanistic" US politicians, all the way up to the Democratic presidential candidate, exchange blows over the company's dramatic price increases of its EpiPen anti-allergy medication, with a healthy dose of amusement for one simple reason: if Congress wants to crack down on someone, it should crack down on itself. After all, the only reason Mylan has been able to pass the kinds of price increases that Congress is now blasting it for, is because of US laws and regulations; laws which incidentally, have been determined in Washington's...

There’s a new bout of outrage over an expensive medicine or medical treatment. While the good in question changes each time, the blame always seems to fall on greedy corporations who just aren’t regulated enough. Free markets and capitalism are the scapegoat, even when nothing remotely resembling unhampered markets in health care is in place in the United States. This time, it’s the EpiPen, a device that easily and safely injects epinephrine to quickly open up airways for people undergoing severe anaphylaxis because of an extreme allergy. It has saved the lives of countless people who are allergic to bee...