For ripping off Medicaid, EpiPen maker Mylan pays Feds $465 million

Enlarge / Heather Bresch, chief executive officer of Mylan. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

In a settlement announced Friday, Mylan, Inc., the maker of EpiPens, will shell out $465 million to the US Department of Justice and other federal agencies to brush aside any questions about its Medicaid rebates.

As Ars reported last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that, by misclassifying EpiPens for years, Mylan has been stiffing federal and state governments out of millions of dollars’ worth of rebates. The CMS said that it had notified Mylan of the mistake “on multiple occasions” since 2007, when the company bought the EpiPen from Merck.

In the meantime, Mylan hiked the price of the life-saving devices on 15 separate occasions, reaching an increase of more than 500 percent. An EpiPen two-pack now goes for more than $600, while a nearly identical single pen was around just $50 in 2007. The steep rise in price has drawn outrage and scorn from the public and lawmakers.