CVS just announced a cheap generic alternative to the EpiPen
This is unbelievable. The first line says:"Pharmaceutical giant CVS announced Thursday that it has partnered with Impax Laboratories to sell a generic epinephrine auto-injector for $109.99 for a two-pack—a dramatic cut from Mylan’s Epipen two-pack prices, which list for more than $600 as a brand name and $300 as a generic."It seems that Mylan, the owner of the Epipen brand, was getting criticized about their outrageous prices [1] so they put out a "generic" version of their own product. Unless I'm missing something, that means that until now, the company that makes the brand name drug and artificially inflates the price (and blames it on insurance companies) also made the only generic version of the product. Given that it's the same company making the brand name and the generic, I assume that they must be equivalent products (am I missing something?), so they are literally just charging an additional $300 for the brand. Why would any patient or insurance company in their right mind pay for the brand name in this case? (this question can be asked more widely about brand name vs generic drugs... but in this case, it has literally been the same company making them. So it's hard to claim that there's even a minor difference, unless the company specifically manufactured them differently, which seems unlikely. For example, some generic drugs could have the same active ingredients, but absorb differently [2]. But it's hard to imagine that being the case for an injection).In any case, it's nice to see that a true competitor is finally entering this market.[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/16/50585163...
[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2016/08/29/br...