EpiPen maker agrees to $465 million settlement to the government


Mylan, the pharmaceutical company that produces the EpiPen, agreed Friday to pay the federal government $465 million to settle accusations from the Department of Justice and other agencies that the corporation misclassified their device so they could hike prices for Medicare and Medicaid billing.
An analysis released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) demonstrated the extent of the hikes: "Total government charges for EpiPens increased 463 percent while EpiPen unit sales at large increased only 51 percent from 2011 to 2015."
Grassley praised the settlement Saturday but warned other companies could be similarly fleecing taxpayers. "This settlement shows a big problem with just one company and one product," he said. "Are there others, and is [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] doing enough to look out for the taxpayers?"
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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