SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Executives at pharmaceutical company Mylan have come under attack for giving themselves raises while boosting the price of a lifesaving injection device by more than 400 percent over the past nine years. Finance professor David Kass at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business compares the situation to a 2015 scandal, when hedge fund manager and pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli raised the price of the AIDS drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750. Mylan has raised the price of a two-dose package of EpiPen to $400. The price was $60 in 2007, the same year the firm purchased the auto-injector. The company also has a virtual monopoly on the product after a voluntary recall felled its only competitor. The product is used as a lifesaving injection device for those who suffer from severe allergies, including potentially fatal allergic reactions. Kass, a former federal government health economist, told San Francisco’s KCBS Radio that bipartisan action from Congress is not surprising over this latest pharmaceutical pricing controversy.
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