Tune in to CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Friday, Aug. 26 at 3:30pm ET. David Martin will be on to discuss the real EpiPen scandal we should be talking about.
Mylan Pharmaceuticals deserves the attention it is getting. Heather Bresch, Mylan's CEO has every reason in the world to have the smug press photos. After all, she's used the mortality of millions who suffer from sudden and acute allergic reactions and heart problems to line her own pockets and those of her investors (while squirreling cash outside the U.S. for tax evasion-like purposes).
Together with Wendy Cameron (Cam Land LLC and Trustee at The Washington Hospital from 2009-2011), The Honorable (retired judge) Robert J. Cindrich (Cindrich Consulting), Robert J. Coury, JoEllen Lyons Dillon (the Chief Legal Officer for the 3-D printing ExOne Company), Neil Dimick (retired EVP at AmerisourceBergen), Melina Higgins (former partner of Goldman Sachs), Douglas J. Leech (Founding Principal of DLJ Advisors), Rajiv Malik, Dr. Joseph C. Maroon (Neurosurgeon at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), Mark W. Parrish (CEO of Trident USA Health Services), Rodney L. Piatt (Horizon Properties Group LLC), and Randall L. Vanderveen, PhD, R.Ph. (University of Southern California's School of Pharmacy) – Mylan's esteemed board of real estate developers, bankers, lawyers, medical educators, and corporate executives – her leadership has steered the company into the maelstrom of public controversy around the insanely expensive EpiPen®.
Bresch's compensation rose 671 percent in 8 years. Media outlets should be doing their stories on the people I listed above, members of Mylan's board of directors, who were willing to endorse a business strategy as ethical as arms dealers in Lord of War.
Let's cut to the chase. Bresch is at best guilty of hyperbole and at worst lying when she was quoted on CNBC saying that, "No one's more frustrated than me. My frustration is, the list price is $608." In 2011, the same product sold for $164. In 2007, it was available for $57.
Does she really want the public to believe that she's frustrated that the Food & Drug Administration has been propping up her company's monopoly on a technology and drug that's been in the public domain since the 1950s? Does she love to know that her firm is pocketing $1 billion for a technology that was acquired from Merck in 2007? Does the public know that the FDA and Congress have willfully succumbed to the pressure of corporate America by ignoring their own rights to the technology?!