The EpiPen price gougers are busy explaining that it’s all the fault of the insurance industry. I expect that if you asked the insurance industry, it would be quick to offer the explanation that it’s actually all the fault of the pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile little Susie just accidentally ingested some peanut, and will she get the injection in time? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch struggled Thursday to justify the repeated big price hikes of the company’s lifesaving EpiPen devices as criticism continued that Mylan is gouging consumers with a retail cost of more than $600.

“No one’s more frustrated than me,” Bresch told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday when she was pressed on the

For the backstory on the EpiPen price-gouging – Tom Cahill at US Uncut:

The EpiPen is a life-saving device commonly used by those with food allergies susceptible to anaphylaxis. Should someone accidentally ingest food that prompts a potentially fatal allergic reaction, like peanuts or shellfish, the EpiPen provides an emergency dose of epinephrine into the person’s bloodstream, immediately alleviating anaphylactic shock. Sheldon Kaplan, who invented the EpiPen, designed it on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense to provide an easily deliverable antidote to nerve gas. The company he was working for eventually released it for public use several years later.

However, in 2007, Mylan Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to the EpiPen and immediately started raising the price. After

Here’s a good thing to sign: a petition to Mylan Pharmaceuticals telling it to undo its massive price hike on EpiPens.

To: Heather Bresch, CEO, Mylan Pharmaceuticals
From: Your Name Here

The EpiPen contains only $1 worth of medicine, but you’re charging hundreds of times that amount. How many poor children will die because their parents can’t afford $600 EpiPens? Drop the price of this lifesaving medicine NOW!

The petition has gone viral, and social pressure does work in these cases.

Meanwhile, the way we do things in this country? It’s disgusting.… Read the rest