Mylan Pharmaceuticals CEO Heather Bresch is still trying to contain the public relations damage her company is taking after it jacked up the price of EpiPens -- but her latest gambit to save face opens her up to charges of hypocrisy as well.
Earlier on Monday, Mylan announced that it would start offering an authorized generic version of its EpiPens that sold at $300 per two-pack, or half the price of the regular EpiPens.
The problem with this, as Bloomberg notes, is that Bresch once decried the tactic of companies releasing authorized generic versions of their own drugs as a greedy scheme to destroy the generic drug market.
In fact, Bresch asked Congress in 2006 to crack down on drug companies that sold unbranded versions of their own drugs, as she said the practice was "the single greatest threat to the generic industry going forward."
So what's Mylan's excuse for doing the same thing its CEO once labeled a gigantic threat to the availability of generic drugs? A Mylan spokeswoman tells Bloomberg that the market has changed since 2006 -- in other words, that was then, this is now.
“Authorized generics are now an established part of this highly competitive industry and we are participating in the industry as it exists today," she explained.
