Now on Bloomberg Radio, we take stock of healthcare. The issue of drug pricing has been at the forefront, certainly in the political realm for the last few months. We're living in a very special time in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. Let me three percent of all biotechs that start actually get a drug approved. It's a very hard thing to do. Bloomberg taking sto healthcare and focus
on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the spotlight is certainly shining hard on Land today under fire for pricing it's EpiPen emergency allergy shots at six hundred dollars, introducing it's as a generic version that will have the price. This is the second move in less than a week to respond to very intense criticism after its offer of assistance programs to help patients cover out of pocket expenses was blasted as
a mere press relations fixed by several US lawmakers. Joining us now for what is going on and what is going to happen next for the epipan and certainly for mylon as Liz Crudeholo, she's especially pharma and biotech analy at Bloomberg Intelligence, joining me here and in New York Studios. Lea's welcome back. So for somebody who hasn't been following this story, it is. It's just a delicious one. It could be an episode on you know, some great Netflix series. Right,
A big drug company lobbies Congress. The head of the company, by the way, the daughter a very powerful congressman. Now, uh, and they get it. The schools have to carry these EpiPens and the government's gonna help them pay for and then she boots the price up. It's sort of a genius marketing experiment. So essentially what they've done is they've created this idea that if your child has a now or do you want EpiPen on you at all times?
So not only is the parent going to carry the EpiPen, but now you also want one in the school, so you buy it in this tupac and most schools you have to keep the two pack together so that the package is labeled, so most patients essentially are going to be buying two of these right to two packs. So it's a genius marketing experiment in that sense that you've got this fear if you don't want to be anywhere
without your EpiPen. On top of that, they then raised the price and a few things allowed them to do that. So one is that we have a generic that was filed with FDA from Teva. It wasn't approved, that will be delayed until seventeen. So now we've got no generic competition. Everyone knows EpiPen by name, right, there's this branding quality that's the almost think someone like the Google becomes a term eppen, what describes this kind of device? You see
it in TV. People run get an EpiPen, right, It's not an EEFN shops epi friend. And so the other thing is that they had a somewhat competitor and Snofi's Ovocue, and that was recalled last year. So they've had this perfect storm where they were able to increase the price, which drew all of this scrutiny. At the same time, I feel like the story really draws attention to the fact that drug companies do not get every single dollar of that price increase. So if you look at the
EpiPen example, there is this middleman situation. So while the list price was six eight dollars for to prescription, Mylon really only saw two and seventy four dollars of that.
The rest went to the middleman. So that that really brings to light the true situation with our health care system and who should be dealing with that is the federal government not doing anything about I mean, but I guess if I'm a middle man, if I'm a woman along that sheen of suppliers, I'm saying, not going to make money too, So hey, you grow up, reality, And that's the exact situation here. Everybody's saying, well, am I
supposed to make money off of this? And so the decision today was even more genius in terms of or you know, a pr situation where they said, look, we understand that people are saying, why not lower the price? And the decision last week on coupons really only applied to people with commercial insurance, so Medicare and Medicaid could not benefit from that. So there was a government aspect as well. By introducing a generic today, they're really cutting out that middleman. And so at the end of the
day on the Myelon impact really nothing. So the stock price is up a little bit today when you look at the fun the mentals for Mylon now and this is this is obviously a very big story, but how are they positioned now to put this behind them and move ahead. And if they do, then what are investors looking at or what should they be looking at? Well, I think it was an extremely smart decision just come
out and address it. So we've seen several companies in the past year we've faced similar congressional probes and pushback, and they've really tried to say, look, you know, we invest in our Indeed, drug making is an expensive practice, and they haven't really just come out and addressed it. So I think that addressing a head on was a very smart decision from an image perspective and just limiting any overhang on the stock. And then secondly is that
they've been moving away from EpiPen. So Epypen right now is about ten percent of revenue. They've been expecting that a generic was coming from Teva, and this new generic essentially blocks generic competition and allows them to focus on their core strength, which is really their generic division. And what are the what should be watching there? What's next? Or what what is what do we think what step could they take? They would say, Okay, time to buy
some more this stock. So the biggest thing to be looking for when they report next quarter will be the integration of their newly acquired Meta division and how well they've been able to integrate, and how much that's been thwarting the whole drug pricing pressure on the generic side. Let's cuarto holo, thank you so very much. Fascinating, what a fun start to cover, always fun, fascinating, Big farm
and more from our own Liz Cardajlo. She is with Bloomberg Intelligence right here in New York City, specialty farm and biotech analyst. She is. Thanks so much to Liz well some news. Ha. We say rest in peace now to Gene Wilders, star Willy Wonka so many mel Brooks comedies. He's dead at the age of eighty three, according to his family, and of course we send them all our sympathies and just terrific memories. At last of Gene Wilder. This is taking Stock on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Kathleen Hayes.
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