Source : Maremont, M. (2016, September 1). EpiPen Maker Mylan Tied Executive Pay to Aggressive Profit Targets. The Wall Street Journal.
As many know, an EpiPen is a living saving medical product that prevents people from serious allergic reactions, that could lead to potentially fatal circumstances. This specific medical product can tend to be very pricey, a generic form of this drug can range up to $300 for a two dose pack. Recently, it has come to the public’s attention of the sky rocketing prices of this drug made and supplied by Mylan. According the Wall Street Journal Article EpiPen Maker Mylan Tied Executive Pay to Aggressive Profit Targets, it states that the company raised their prices up to $608 for a two dose package. Industry watchers are becoming skeptical if these sky rocketing prices are directly correlated with the two year incentive program that the company has been offering its employees. This incentive program ultimately increases the executive salaries by linking their pay to the overall companies earnings . The prices doubled right after the incentive program was released. Mylan evidently blamed the increasing prices on the high patient costs on the insurers. From the article, it states that Mylans operating income nearly doubled in the past two years.
It has raised to my attention that there is an ethical issue stirring around the company Mylan. As stated in the article, the company may be feeding lies to the media to cover up the real truth between the correlation of increasing profits and increasing product prices to sugar coat the situation to the public. As being an APR major, I understand that the Public Realations Professional’s duty is to construct and release information to the public on the companies behalf. It makes me wonder if the PR Professionals working for Mylan are to ethical in the way that they go about things and release information to media. They are not representing honesty and fairness to the public.
Many patients life’s are in the hands of this medication, and with this increase prices, it will be harder to patients to purchase it. In other articles, it was said that people were going to Canada to purchase the drug at a much cheaper price, because of the health care system that resides there. Mylan is trying to offer a identical generic version of the drug which will run for about $300 to compensate for the price increase. They can do this but they can’t bring the prices down on the original drug. The matter of the fact is, even generic EpiPens are cheap for the company to make and operating costs are low. It almost doesn’t make sense to me that they would jack the prices up to almost double when the initial cost of the drug has not increased. Ultimately, I believe that Mylan is going against the ethical conceptions of fairness and honest to consumers and their patient rights. They are increasing the cost of their product for their own pay and for their own good, and not considering consumers rights and life’s that could be at stake for this price increase.
phi325 
The increasing price for this medication is frightening. Many people can barely afford to purchase this life-saving and necessary medication.
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