Rx Savings' Rea on Wide Gaps in EpiPen Drug Pricing (Audio)

Amper dot com slash real estate. Now, let's head right over to the first Word breaking news desk for today's afternoon call. Here he is there, he is Bill Maloney. Good afternoon, Charlie. Stocks are under pressure today, helped by declines up as much as nine percent in Deutsche Bank. About ten hedge funds are said to have cut Deutsche

Bank's exposure. Dallas, currently down a hundred and sixty three points, has to be stropped sixteen and NAZAC is lower by forty the small cap SIXANDREA drops seven points, and the US ten yield at one point five six percent. Ten out of eleven sub sectors are lower, led by declines and healthcare, financials and utilities only Telecom gained, doubt, Transports game fourteen, utilities fall nine, Nazi botechs were hit hard, sink eighty four, and the vix is higher by seventeen percent.

Leaders to the downside in the Dow included Goldman, Sachs, Merk, and Nike. Caterpillar led to the upside, and Jilan News. Dow Jones reported that Qualcom is said to be in talks to a quiet n XP Semiconductor n XPI gained as much as nineteen percent, and finally, Costco reports after the bell live from the first breaking news. Ask Bill Maloney, Charlotte,

thank you very much. Good Maloney will be on Costco as we get those numbers and to hear live breaking news over your Bloomberg type squawk s q U A w K on your terminal stocks. Laura, I'm Charlie Pelt. That's a Bloomberg business flash. Now on Bloombern Radio, we take stock of healthcare. The tissue of drug pricing has been at the forefront, certainly in the political brown for the last few months. We're in a very special time

in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. How many three percent of all biotechs that start actually get a drug approved. It's a very hard thing to do. Bloomberg takings to healthcare and focus on Bloomberg radio the prices of drugs. The EpiPen allergy shot, for example, we know, of course it's in mentioning controversy because it sells for almost as much as the latest iPhone in the United States, actually

cost less than its leather case in Britain. That's just one egregious example of the kind of situations that Michael Ray faces and tries to solve with his company are X Savings Solutions, where he's founder and CEO based in Overland Park, Kansas. So, Michael, uh, it has the problem gotten less bad with so much focus on it or does it continue to you know, vexed consumers and companies? Well, I think, you know, for pleasurely with you guys, I

think it continues to vex the entire market. And when you see store whereas like today, um, you start comparing to other countries that at even another level of questioning about what, um, what what a price should be. M we obviously know we've been paying and uh, you know last week my island was in front of Congress, but they didn't lower the price. You know, it's it's a public scolding, but it's not it's not change in prices.

So it's concerning. Hey, Michael, you know, one of the things I want to point to out is that federal health regulators have said that my line is short change in the government on rebates for sales of EpiPen uh, despite the drugmaker having already been admonished that the way it classified the device for rebates is in correct. Can you explain what's going on? Well, I think that you know, the way rebates work is very complex. Um. You know,

you can call rebates can be called different things. Um, they can be called access fees, formulary formulary tr fees, they can be called mark could share. But the but the you know, at the end of the day, it's money that's promised to go back to whoever the payer is, in this case the federal government. Um. You know, if if that is the case and that's found out to be be true, UM, I suspect more problems from Island. So tell us more about how your company is working

to solve this problem. Yeah, great, great question. Um. You know, so, really what we're trying to do is we're trying to put information in the hands of consumers. Americans are you know, really good consumers and nearly everything they buy except prescription drugs. And the reason that they're not is not because they don't want to, it's because it's too hard. Um, there's

there's a lack of information available. UM, there's certain players in the supply chain that that wants, UM, you know, access to certain information so that so that you know, consumer will buy an f depen instead of another product on the market, UM, another FNF from product that maybe a third of the price. And so you know, what we really try to do is put that information back in the hands consumers, let them know about all of their options, and in turn they act more like consumers.

They save money, the health plan saves money, and their employers saves money. So what the people who use an EpiPen, what do they take away from this? Yeah, you know, it's a great, great question, and I think that um, you know, this is something that's been missing from the conversation is the fact that there is an F and F from product available. It's an auto injector product. Um, it's a fraction of the price to EpiPen, and most people just don't even know that they have that choice

miland was very effective the same. And what about the cost, because I know that I was looking at the cost of the EpiPen. It now sells for more than six hundred dollars per two pack, or more than three dollars a piece. Obviously, when they bought this product back in two thousand and seven, they saw they were selling this product was selling for fifty seven dollars each. Yeah, So I think that there's there's really two important points there.

The first is UM, you know, they rose prices because they thought they could UM and in a free market, you know, we reward stockholders for that. On the flip side, UM, a lot of information has been withheld from from you health plans, employers and their consumers, and so really we want to put that information back in the hands of the consumer. They can pay half the price that they

would otherwise for nepeten. And something that we've been doing for a couple of years is we've seen this happen, is we've been moving and getting that information out to our users where they're paying ten dollar co pays for a generic from product instead of six price tech that the pharmacy counter for the branded so that there's a really big difference and that information needs to get to people. It sounds like, uh, do you see more, um more of the kind of thing you do being done in

the in the industry by other companies as well? You know, I haven't heard of anyone else doing it yet. I suspect, you know, there's a lot of interest in this um and and one of the things that we take some pride in is we do have a granted patent for the process, so we think but it's a bit unique, and we really want to advocate for the people who

haven't had the representation for a long time. That's consumers, that's their their employers, and the health plans that largely have been taken out of the equation in a lot of cases. Thank you very much for joining us. Michael Ray is the founder and the chief executive of our ex Savings Solutions based in Overland Park, Kansas. Of course

is our healthcare segment. And just to give you an update on the EpiPen program, Senate staffers and two U S senators have called for an increased investigation of the classification of EpiPens. You're listening to taking stock This is Bloomberg, Bloomber. Taking stock is brought you by Bank of America Mery Lynch's Global Cash management solutions, helping you manage, protect an investor, global cash wherever the road to growth leads. That's the

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