The value of the expensive Epipen is convenience -- patients just need to learn to give themselves the shot

Most of us had not heard of the Epipen until the news readers proclaimed that a greedy drug company began charging a small fortune for it. The horrors of the free market!

Turns out that all Epipen is is a delivery device that dispenses a single dose of a hormone called Epinephrine which turns out to be non-patentable. Thomas Lifson explains something important in EpiPen too expensive? You can get the same dose for ten bucks.

Simply buy the Epinephrine and a syringe, learn how to use it, and save hundreds of dollars. Do-it-your-selfers will jump on this. Others -- those who lean toward the cradle to grave nanny state -- will insist on a government regulation mandating a cheap price for the Epipen.

When I was a kid my mom gave me allergy shots once a week. Tuesdays, as I recall. She would boil the needle and the syringe -- yeah we used the same one over and over. Then I would get a shot in the arm. Of course I hated it. But I lived to tell about.

And I got more than a temporary immunity to rag weed. I'm immune to the whining from those people complaining about having to pay for the convenience of the Epipen because they're too wimpy to get a real shot.

Comments

[Rob O.]

It's a bit more than a convenience. Pen-based drugs are a means of accurately delivering a specific amount of medication quickly. The consistency of dose combined with the reduced muss and fuss is why pen-based insulin is so popular - even in hospital settings.

Mylan deserves all of the woes that it gets over this nasty, opportunistic 400% price hike. Nobody contends that drug manufacturers shouldn't recoup their R&D costs and make a profit, but there's absolutely a limit.

The Epinephrine autoinjector was invented in the mid-70s and had, until the EpiPen was acquired by Mylan as a part of their purchase of Germany’s Merck KGaA, been selling for about $7 each.

(The device delivers about $1 worth of drug.)

Mylan was selling EpiPens profitably for under $60 per pen less than a decade ago, but when the sole competing product was recalled in 2015, that opened an opportunity for the company to severely gouge the price since EpiPen consumers have no comparable option.

Mylan's executives deserve to be burned at the stake right aside Martin Shkreli.