Mylan-Upjohn/Pfizer Merger Should Be Blocked
Statement of Peter Maybarduk, Director, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program
Note: Pfizer and Mylan on Monday announced that they plan to merge Pfizer’s Upjohn unit with Mylan.
We call on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block this anti-consumer merger.
With outrageous and jaw-dropping price spikes increasingly commonplace, America is all too familiar with the generic medicines market not working as well as it should.
This proposal would merge two notorious price gouging and allegedly price fixing firms into a generics behemoth that swallows product lines and makes medicine more expensive.
Both Mylan and Pfizer feature prominently in a lawsuit by 44 states against generic drugmakers for fixing prices. Mylan’s instincts in recent years have run toward raising prices – not only in the EpiPen scandal it created, but as a part of the corporation’s philosophy.
Generic competition is the most effective way to make medicine affordable, but only when there is real competition in the generics sector. Mylan competes on two-thirds of the medicines that Upjohn sells. Equally important, a merger of two of the largest generic manufacturers would eliminate potential future competition in the generics sector.
This is not a merger that can be fixed with divestitures or licensing agreements. The FTC must block this merger.