Right now in the United States of America, there is a monopoly that exists that involves epinephrine auto-injectors. EpiPen is the United States only supplier of these auto-injectors because other brands have suffered setbacks and failures, patent protection laws, and because there are currently no generic versions of EpiPen in the United States (Johnson). This monopoly was not a problem until Mylan bought Meda AB in 2007 (Paton). “Since Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen in 2007, it has raised the price on 15 separate occasions, bringing the current list price to $608 for a two-pack up from about $50 a pen in 2007” (Mole). This has been a price increase of more than 500%, and this shows that Mylan has been using the monopoly to its advantage. …show more content…
This action taken by the government into the investigation of the monopoly of EpiPens has uncovered that Mylan has been misclassifying the EpiPens for years. Mylan was supposed to classify EpiPen as a single source (meaning brand name drug) which would require them to provide Medicaid rebate of 23.1% of the cost and inflation rebate, but instead they classified it as a generic version of a drug which only requires 13% Medicaid rebate of the cost and no inflation rebate (Mole). This may cause the government to give Mylan penalties, and it may cause the government to make claims on sales. The government is penalizing and criticizing Mylan for using the system incorrectly, and the government is supporting generic versions of EpiPens and different brands to come to the United States to stop the monopoly and increase competition. Although some patent laws created by the government have created an epinephrine auto-injector monopoly in the United States, the government is working now to eliminate this monopoly and penalize Mylan for using it to its