THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

After jacking up the price of Epi-Pen, which for some reason is still under patent 100+ years after epinephrine was discovered and 40 years after the injector mechanism was developed by the US government, the magnanimous folks at the foreign based Mylan Pharmaceutical Borgata have announced they will release a generic form of the device for only $300. For the record that is still $200 more than the price before Mylan's Bresch got greedy.

Mylan NV (MYL.O) said it would launch the first generic version of its allergy auto-injector EpiPen for $300, half the price of the branded product, the drugmaker's second step in less than a week to counter the backlash over the product's steep price.

The company reduced the out-of-pocket costs of EpiPen for some patients on Thursday, but kept the list price at about $600, a move that U.S. lawmakers and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said was not enough. EpiPen cost about $100 in 2008.

Mylan said on Monday it expected to launch the generic product "in several weeks," an unusual move considering the branded bestseller is still patent protected and major rival treatments have failed to get regulatory clearances.

Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal said Myl‎an may appear to be moving in the right direction, but its latest move raised as many questions as solutions, including why the price is still astronomically high and whether its action is a preemptive strike against a competing generic.

Mylan has defended EpiPen's high price, saying it had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the product since acquiring it in 2007.

It has said it recoups less than half the list price as pharmacy benefit managers, which often require discounted prices or rebates from drugmakers, are involved, along with insurers and others.

"Our decision to launch a generic alternative to EpiPen is an extraordinary commercial response," Chief Executive Heather Bresch said Monday. "We determined that bypassing the brand system in this case and offering an additional alternative was the best option."

However, consumer watchdog group Public Citizen said Mylan's latest move was another "convoluted mechanism to avoid plain talk, admit to price gouging and just cut the price of EpiPen."

"The weirdness of a generic drug company offering a generic version of its own branded but off-patent product is a signal that something is wrong," President Robert Weissman said.

If Mylan can't admit their greed they need to simply roll back prices.