INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Martin Shkreli: Disgraced ‘PharmaBro’ Defended The EpiPen Price Hike, Because Of Course He Did

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 07:16 PST, Aug 25, 2016

Martin Shkreli, the disgraced pharmaceutical company CEO who famously raised the price of a life-saving antiparasitic drug from $13 to over $750 per dose, has injected himself into the EpiPen controversy, and you can guess whose side he’s taking.

As USA Today reports, Shkreli sat down with CBS News this week to give his thoughts on the matter, and not unexpectedly, he took the side of Mylan, the manufacturer.

“Mylan is the good guy.”

Mylan, for those not familiar, is the manufacturer of the so-called EpiPen, a one-time-use device that injects a dose of epinephrine (adrenaline) into the body in the event of an allergy attack. Persons with severe allergies should carry an EpiPen with them at all times, and if the sufferer were to go into an allergy attack, the pen could mean the difference between life and death.

Until a few weeks ago, few people outside of people with severe allergies, or parents of kids with severe allergies, had likely never given the EpiPen a moment’s thought. But in recent weeks, the EpiPen and its manufacturer, Mylan, has been under fire for drastically increasing the price of the life-saving drug from around $100 per dose in 2009, to over $600 by May, 2016, a 500 percent increase. The amount of medicine delivered by the EpiPen costs about $1 to manufacture, according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch’s pay increased from around $2.5 million in 2007 to almost $19 million in 2016, according to NBC News – a 671 percent increase.

News of the price increase has sparked outrage from both observers and from the federal government. In response, Mylan offered up programs to offer discounts to make the drug more affordable, according to USA Today. But Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Maryland, isn’t buying it.

“Nobody is buying this PR move anymore. Mylan should not offer after-the-fact discounts only for a select few—it should reverse its massive price increases across the board immediately. Drug company CEOs are using a corrupt business model to profit off of our most vulnerable citizens and using them like ATMs.”

Now Martin Shkreli, himself no stranger to pharmaceutical price gouging, has entered the discussion.

Shkreli, who became something of a national villain in 2015 when news broke that, as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of an anti-parasitic drug by over 5,000 percent. Shkreli was defiant and unapologetic throughout the controversy, earning himself the nickname “Pharma Bro.” And when asked to testify before Congress about pharmaceutical price-gouging, Shkreli refused, and instead pleaded the 5th.

So it should come as no surprise, then, that Skreli is on Mylan’s side. Rather than blame pharmaceutical companies for indiscriminately raising the prices of life-saving drugs, Shkreli blamed insurance companies for not properly covering their costs.

“The idea that they’re this big company that’s gouging people and making tons of money — I don’t think that’s quite true. The fault here lies in the insurance companies.”

Ever the gentleman and professional, Shkreli took to Twitter Thursday to poke fun at Congressional Democrats who called on him to testify, and at whom he thumbed his nose by pleading the 5th.

House Democrats did not find Shkreli’s joke funny at all.

One thing the EpiPen controversy, and Skreli’s similar controversy stirred up last year, both make clear is that the pharmaceutical system in the U.S. is flawed, to say the least. That’s due to a host of factors that are probably best left to another article (and whose causes and solutions differ depending on whom you ask).

But if even Martin Shkreli, of all people, agrees that the system is flawed, then hopefully the EpiPen controversy can start a national conversation about how to address the problem.

[Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

Share this article: Martin Shkreli: Disgraced ‘PharmaBro’ Defended The EpiPen Price Hike, Because Of Course He Did
Martin Shkreli
More from Inquisitr