New revelations made on as to how Mylan overcharged for their EpiPen, attracted new attacks from primary opponent of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D.), since his daughter is CEO of the pharmaceutical company.
Heather Bresch, Manchin’s daughter came under the spotlight, when she was called to testify in front of the Congress regarding the increase in the price of EpiPens.
Just as the price of a two-pack EpiPen rose from $100 in 2007 to more than $600 by 2016. Bresch’s salary, also rose from $2.4 million in 2007 to nearly $19 million in 2015.
On Wednesday, a report was released that showed that Mylan had in fact overcharged the government $1.27 billion, after the company had settled with the Department of Justice only for $465 million, last year.
The situation for Mylan, became even worse, when reports indicated that a top executive was paid $98 million the very same year.
Paula Jean, Manchin’s Democratic primary opponent, took no time in turning the report into a political attack against the West Virginia senator, who had taken $127,000 in campaign contributions from Mylan and pressed for his colleagues to be “open-minded and fair” when investigating the scandal.
She shared the report on Twitter, “I will just leave this here,” Jean wrote linking to the CNN report. “You can ask my opponent about it.”
“We won’t be beholden to any special interests because our campaigns are funded by small donations from supporters, not big corporations,” Jean said in an email.
And said on her website, “Private insurance companies have been allowed by generations of corrupt politicians to become monopolies with the power to extort many hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people each year.”
It has also been brought to light that the drug company classified their EpiPen as a generic drug instead of a brand-name drug under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, which granted them $1 billion in excess payments from the rebate program.