Heather Bresch, Mylan executive who came under public scrutiny this week for raising EpiPen prices, reportedly raised prices more than 20% on 24 products

The executive of the pharmaceutical company that hiked the prices of two dozen drugs, including EpiPen, received a 671% pay increase over the past nine years.

Heather Bresch, chief executive officer of Mylan, came under public scrutiny this week after reports that since acquiring rights to EpiPen in 2007, the company had implemented a series of gradual price increases inflating the price of the drug from $56.64 to $317.82, a 461% increase in cost . During that same time, Bresch went from being Mylan’s chief operating officer to president to chief executive and saw her pay rise $2,453,456 to $18,931,068, a 671% increase.

When Mylan first acquired Merck KGaA in 2007, Bresch oversaw the integration of its 400 products. Among those products was EpiPen, which is used to quickly deliver a proper dose of epinephrine to those suffering from anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis is when an allergic reaction causes one’s airways to swell and close. In a 2015 interview with Fortune, Bresch described EpiPen as “my baby”. Under her management, EpiPen went from bringing in $200m a year in sales to becoming Mylan’s first billion-dollar product.

Following the outcry over the increase in EpiPen’s prices, Bresch, who is the daughter of West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, could be called on to justify Mylan’s pricing before the US Congress. Her father does not sit on the Senate judiciary committee, which would most likely hear her testimony.

Mylan has hiked prices of other products as well, according to a June report by a Wells Fargo senior analyst David Maris.

“Mylan has raised the prices more than 20% on 24 products, and more than 100% on seven products,” he wrote.



Among the products whose prices were hiked over the past six months were:

Ursodiol, a drug used to treat gallstones, saw its price increase by 542%

Dicyclomine, a drug used to treat irritable bowel syndrome, saw its price increase by 400%



Tolterodine, a drug used to treat overactive bladders, saw its price increase by 56%



The Guardian has reached out to Mylan to confirm these hikes.

In his report, Maris noted that the price hikes could draw “greater regulatory scrutiny and headline risk”.

“Mylan’s business model is not today, nor has it ever been, premised on price hikes,” Nina Devlin, Mylan’s spokeswoman, said in June. She described Maris’s analysis as “flawed” and said it focused on a small selection of the company’s 1,400-plus products.

The fact that EpiPen is a household item for those suffering from severe allergies is perhaps why this price increase is drawing so much public ire.

“One reason I think the EpiPen situation is getting so much attention compared to other cases is a lot of the high-cost drugs are used by patients who are very sick, cancer patients, multiple sclerosis. These are patients that actually don’t end up paying a lot of these costs out of pocket because they hit their out of pocket maximums and deductibles pretty quickly,” explained David H Howard, a health economist at the department of health policy and management at Emory University.

“But for EpiPen, a lot of people who are using this, or might use it, are pretty healthy. They don’t have a lot of other health conditions or health needs so this is their major expense and they end up paying for a lot of of it out their own pocket,” Howard told the Guardian.

Since the price hike was reported, a number of lawmakers have called on the company to make its products affordable.

“Due to Mylan’s virtual monopoly of the epinephrine auto-injector market and its unique life-saving attribute, it is crucial that your product remains affordable for all Americans,” Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthalwrote in a letter to Mylan. “Therefore, I demand that Mylan take immediate action to lower the price of EpiPens for all Americans that rely on this product for their health and safety.”

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton put out a statement on Wednesday calling on Mylan to reduce the price of EpiPen, saying: “It’s wrong when drug companies put profits ahead of patients.”

According to Citigroup analysts Liav Abraham and Eugene Kim, there is “little regulatory action that can be implemented to compel Mylan to lower the price of EpiPen”. However, increased scrutiny and an appearance before the Senate judiciary committee could lead to “self-regulation”, they wrote in a note to investors. They noted that over the past 12 months, EpiPen underwent two 15% price increases.

Earlier this year, another pharmaceutical executive was in the hot seat in front of the US Congress: Martin Shkreli, former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Shkreli became notorious after Turing increased prices of its HIV medicine Daraprim by 5,000%. The price of the drug went from $13.50 to $750 overnight.

In a recent interview with NBC, Shkreli said that he too considered gradual hikes in price – akin to how Mylan proceeded – but had instead decided “to come out and say: ‘This is our desired price’”.

Prior to being acquired by Mylan in 2007, the price of EpiPen went up 3%-4% on several occasions. Price increases under Mylan ranged from 5% in 2008 to 20% in 2009.

Shkreli went on to describe Mylan as “vultures” and asked: “What drives this company’s moral compass?”

Profit seems to be the answer.

According to Mylan’s second quarter earnings report, its total revenue so far this year was $2.56bn, up 8% compared to last year. Its net sales in the “specialty third party” category, which includes Mylan’s EpiPen, increased by $100.6m or 33% during the three months ending in June 2016, compared to the same period last year. Some of that increase was due to higher EpiPen sales, the company said in its earnings report.