Word: mylan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Mylan CEO Milan Puskar not only rejects those allegations--"radical, rushed and wrong," he says--but thinks his company should get a medal for lowering overall drug costs to consumers during the past 15 years and for taking on brand-name drug companies that are resorting to every dilatory tactic at their disposal to keep their precious compounds from falling into the hands of generic manufacturers...
...Mylan's pricing strategy was designed to get the company out of a double whammy. At the pharmacy counter, brutal price competition for drugs such as captopril, a hypertension remedy, and naproxen, an antiarthritis drug, has hurt margins. At the factory, the company is facing an escalating legal and regulatory campaign waged by brand-name pharmaceutical companies such as American Home Products and Merck to extend patents on their drugs or prevent others from manufacturing them. "Generics are caught in a squeeze, which is why only half the 24 publicly traded companies in the industry are profitable," says Jerry Treppel...
...struggle over patent extension is where Mylan has assumed the role of crusader for lower-cost drugs. Last year the company helped found a lobbying group called the Campaign for Fair Pharmaceutical Competition. The group is currently pushing to eliminate sections of the Waxman-Hatch Act, a landmark 1984 law designed to promote drug competition. One target: a provision that prevents the FDA from reviewing generic-drug applications for 30 months if the patent holder sues...
...opposing lobbyists have a slightly different spin. Proprietary medications can work better and sometimes protect consumers from potentially unsafe or ineffective generic compounds, according to Alan Holmer, president of PhRMA, a lobby for the brand holders. He derides Mylan's lobbying as "nothing more than a brazen attempt to deflect attention from the generic industry's embarrassment at its recent dramatic price increase and calls for antitrust investigations of their practices...
Whatever happens to Mylan, America's generic-drug industry is likely to emerge much stronger from the current turmoil. Even with delays, brand-name drugs that now account for sales of more than $40 billion a year could become available in generic form by 2008. Based on current pricing, consumers might save an additional $16 billion. And that's not too hard to swallow...