ATLANTA — The price of an EpiPen, which reverses the effects of an allergic reaction, has dramatically increased.
The cost used to be a little more than $100 a few years ago, now it costs more than $600 at local pharmacies.
“(It’s a) major, major crisis in the allergy world,” said Dr. Paul Rabinowitz, a certified allergist. “You can die. You eat food, you don’t have an EpiPen and you can die.” %
Doctors and patients say Mylan, the pharmaceutical company that makes EpiPens, is taking advantage of their monopoly on the allergy medicine market.
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“They can get away with jacking up prices for consumers and causing a major medical crisis,” Rabinowitz said.
“With changes in the healthcare insurance landscape, an increasing number of people and families are enrolled in high-deductible health plans. This shift, along with other insurance landscape changes, has presented new challenges for consumers and they are bearing more of the cost,” Mylan said in a statement to Channel 2’s Craig Lucie.
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Mylan also said that it provides coupons for its customers.
Pharmacists say even with coupons, some patients still cannot afford this life-saving medication.
For example, even though the coupon offers a $0 copay, pharmacists say that is rarely the case and although patients get $100 off, they still end up having to pay around $500.
“It’s a major problem because patients are not and cannot refill prescriptions,” Rabinowitz said.
Mylan said that half of the schools in the U.S. have participated in its “EpiPen 4 Schools” initiative.
The company said that it has given more than 650,000 EpiPens to schools nationwide.