OF THE
TIMES
Manchin Family Values:
EpiPens are life-saving devices for people who go into anaphylactic shock after exposure to certain substances —peanuts, the venom in a bee sting, latex and others. The medicine in an EpiPen costs pennies; it is epinephrine, a synthesized version of adrenaline, the hormone made by our bodies. The EpiPen has a patented spring-loaded injector that makes it unnecessary to draw medicine into a syringe prior to injection. (Time is of the essence when a person is going into anaphylactic shock.) Purchasers are reminded that epinephrine loses potency over time and EpiPens have to be purchased annually. The EpiPen two-pack sold by Mylan that cost a little over $100 in 2009 and would cost a little under $500 in 2016 thanks to Joe Manchin’s daughter........
The EpiPen is the product of US taxpayer-funded research conducted in the 1970s for the Pentagon —which wanted an auto-injector device for soldiers facing exposure to nerve gas— by a company called Survival Technology. The rights to market a civilian version to prevent anaphylaxis were then sold and re-sold. Survival merged with Brunswick, which sold the rights to Dey, a subsidiary of Merck, which in 2007 sold the rights to Mylan, which made a production deal with King, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pfizer.
As Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin had appointed his wife to the state Board of Education in 2007. By 2012 Gayle Conelly Manchin would be president of the National Association of State Boards of Education, an official-sounding-but-private outfit that lobbies state boards to adopt policies favored by Association members. In 2016 USA Today (a paper that doesn’t get enough credit for serious muckraking) reported that Mrs. Manchin had “spearheaded an unprecedented effort that encouraged states to require schools to purchase medical devices that fight life-threatening allergic reactions. “The association’s move helped pave the way for Mylan Specialty, maker of EpiPens, to develop a near monopoly in school nurses’ offices. Eleven states drafted laws requiring epinephrine auto-injectors. Nearly every other state recommended schools stock them after what the White House called the ‘EpiPen Law’ in 2013 gave funding preference to those that did.”
It’s reassuring to know that none of this was ever discussed when the Manchins’ daughter Heather was in earshot. At Thanksgiving dinner it was all “Please pass the mashed potatoes, dad.”Heather’s brilliant career was launched after Joe Manchin introduced her to the CEO of Mylan. Although her claim to have a Master’s Degree in Business Administration was exposed as a lie, her fast rise to the top was unimpeded. Heather had something better than a degree, she had real audacity. And so she quadrupled the price of a drug that several million US Americans must have on hand and buy every year......Heather’s salary rose from $2.5 million in 2007 to $18.9 million in 2015. She was then 45 years old and would have become the poster child of Pharmaceutical Industry Greed had it not been for Martin Shkreli.......[Link]
Comment: Manchin is pretty much the sole sane Democrat in office. Naturally, the Borg isn't pleased with such a blatant expression of principled individualism.