After stirring national outrage over its alleged price gouging of emergency allergy drug EpiPen, pharmaceutical giant Mylan is under fire once again for potentially violating anti-trust laws by inserting “potentially anticompetitive terms” into its EpiPen sales contracts to schools.
In a statement announcing the launch of a new investigation Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman declared: “No child’s life should be put at risk because a parent, school, or healthcare provider cannot afford a simple, life-saving device because of a drug-maker’s anti-competitive practices.”
Vowing to “bring the full resources of my office to this critical investigation,” Schneiderman continued, “If Mylan engaged in anti-competitive business practices, or violated antitrust laws with the intent and effect of limiting lower cost competition, we will hold them accountable…Allergy sufferers have enough concerns to worry about—the availability of life-saving medical treatment should not be one of them.”
A preliminary probe by the office of the New York AG reportedly found evidence suggesting that Mylan may have “locked schools into non-competitive contracts in order to purchase the EpiPens at an affordable price,” according to Bloomberg, citing an undisclosed person familiar with the matter.
Echoing those concerns, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Tuesday sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling on the agency “to issue Mylan an administrative subpoena to determine whether the company deliberately engaged in exclusionary practices to hinder its competitors and maintain its monopoly position in the market,” The Hill reports.
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