The CEO of Mylan, maker of anti-allergy drug EpiPen says that she agrees with President Trump’s side when taking on the rising cost of prescription drug prices. However, she stated that she does not agree with how the president plans to do it. Heather Bresch praised the Trump administration for bringing the spotlight on the rising drug prices and the demand to lower the drug price.
Bresch said that she could not agree with the president more. According to her, Trump has shown that he is willing to make tough decisions, hard decisions but the right decisions. According to Trump, he thinks that drug companies are getting away with murder and that he is going to bring down drug prices. One of the ways that he hopes to accomplish this is by negotiating drug prices through Medicare and Medicaid, something that is not possible at the present.
Bresch however does not agree with the plan to change the current laws to allow for the negotiation to happen. She said that what she supports is a holistic approach at how pharmaceutical pricing is done today and the best way to make it market driven and have product transparency to the patient. Mylan drew a lot of flak recently after an increase of about 500 percent of its two-pack of EpiPens. The price went from $100 to $608. Mylan tried to put the blame on middlemen such as pharmacy benefit managers and wholesalers that gets a cut from the list price of EpiPen as reported by Business Insider.
The national health insurance trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans gave a statement to CBS News that millions of patients depend on prescription drugs to keep them well. Health plans provide comprehensive access to these life-saving drugs every day. Health plans help control the rising cost of medicines by negotiating prices with drug companies that lower premiums and negotiate with pharmacies to lower prices when prescriptions are filled.
However, the problem of skyrocketing drug prices starts long before a prescription is handed to a patient. Drug companies who have no competition in the market can set whatever price they want and patients pay more for insurance in a practice called price gouging. To counter this, more competition is needed, more choices and lower costs.
