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Edited by Joyaboi: 8/26/2016 10:50:36 AM
8

Epipen's Monopoly

[spoiler]*A Wild Gringo has appeared*[/spoiler] Hola, I just wanted to share this, which I am sure many of you will not give a shit about. If so leave now. This isn't clickb8 or a shitpost, so if that's what you're hoping for, you can click away now, I'm sorry for wasting your time. Now that that's over with, I thank you if you have kept reading. Now to the point at hand. I have a serious peanut and tree nut allergy. I am one of those people who if someone makes a peanut butter sandwich and makes me bagel and cream cheese with the same knife, I will die. Whoops. There are plenty of theories as to why anaphylactic (make you go into shock) food allergies have become popular, but no matter the reason they're a thing and they suck. I can't go to 5 Guy's, or any Chinese place, or even eat a -blam!-ing candy bar. I generally keep a good humor about it, my friends and I joke about it, but it really -blam!-ing sucks. There is a "partial cure" to these allergies though. Epinephrine is sort of like synthetic adrenaline. If injected into your blood stream while having an allergic reaction, it can buy you precious time before you get to reach the hospital where they can treat you properly. To put it lightly, the shit is a literal life saver. Now for years the only maker of an Epinephrine auto injector is Mylan's Epipen. There have been plenty of attempted competitors but they have all been shot down by a mixture of 2 things: Mylan's patent on the auto injector device and Mylan's close relationship with the FDA, who shoots down anyone who tries to sidestep the patent by claiming anything else is unsafe. Over time the Epipen 2 pack has slowly climbed from $60 to closer to $100. Not to mention you have to buy a new one every year because it expires every year. So it gets really expensive over a while, but I and many other people have tolerated it because... we -blam!-ing need it. Also the Epipens are very large and just all around annoying to cary. They will barely fit into even the deepest of cargo short pockets. So come around a year or two ago and a French company named "Safoni" created the Auvi-Q. It is smaller, easier to cary, only sightlier more expensive than the Epipen was, and when opened, it automatically would read you the instructions. Pretty damn nice. About 2 weeks of it being [i]finally[/i] allowed by the FDA (this thing went through years of red tape) Mylan started to publicly bash it. Everything seemed nice and fine until Safoni accidentally released a batch of defective Auvi-Q's. The FDA pounced and banned Auvi-Q's to an endless purgatory of red tape and possibly years (if ever) for it to come back. Now Epipen is back to their monopoly, but shit is getting out of hand. Remember how I said how Epipens are about $100? Well Mylan wants to raise the price to $600 for a 2 pack. That you need to replace every. single. year. I want to live another 60 years. Lets say I do. That is 60 years of $600, so in the rest of my life, I may pay $36,000 for something that takes about $10 a piece. So now you see the dilemma I ,and everyone with a severe allergy, has to go through. Because of Mylan's monopoly, enforced by the FDA, they can fix prices without competition. Someone needs to do something about this. It is in direct opposition to everything America stands for. Thanks for listening to my little rant. Tell me what you think, if you care.

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  • And they want to raise the CEO (I think)'s pay raise to over 400%

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    • Medical companies overcharge so much they make Activision look charitable.

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    • Edited by Cobravert: 8/26/2016 3:10:50 PM
      Funny you should mention this. https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14022189_1777704839114090_5491335114319750295_n.jpg?oh=a8c460c5e0a3ddbfa984ecef3ff7fdcd&oe=5843F1AC

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    • It is quite a horrible thing to do [spoiler]The CEO makes $18 million per year too.[/spoiler] Hopefully the publicity pressures them into lowering the prices.

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    • Try importing. Probably gonna be cheaper elsewhere where health problems are more prominent and less monopolised.

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    • 600 X 60 = 36,000 And yes, it is rent-seeking of the worst kind.

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      • Too bad they stopped putting Epi in nasal sprays (over the counter ones anyways) that would be much cheaper, albeit not AS effective but combined with Benadryl would be an alternative until further medical treatment was available. Regardless, pharmaceutical companies (and also medical equipment suppliers to a lesser extent) are a bane on healthcare.

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      • Edited by tjustie: 8/26/2016 4:07:58 AM
        I saw a headline that said that Epipen's CEO (or maybe it was creator?) was claiming that the price increase is due to Obamacare, which is apparently hitting some very rough patches lately. The amount of truth to that claim, I have no idea, I didn't read the article or care to look into it. Just felt like sharing that mildly relevant tidbit of vague information in this mostly useless comment. Tada. But yeah, that sucks.

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