Mylan says it won't testify at a Senate hearing about the EpiPen
Mylan won't be appearing at a November 30 Senate hearing into the EpiPen.
The hearing, titled "Oversight of the EpiPen Crisis and Settlement: Where is the Federal Government in Looking out for Taxpayers and Patients?" is being held by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, headed by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
"From the stated title of the hearing, we understand that the intended focus of the hearing will be on the Committee's oversight of government agencies as it relates to a pending matter," Mylan's lawyers wrote to Grassley. Citing other agencies declining to testify as well, Mylan declined the invite to testify.
On October 7, Mylan said it agreed to pay $465 million to the Department of Justice and other government agencies over the way it classified the EpiPen in the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program.
The DOJ also declined to testify at the hearing, saying that "it hasn't "agreed to any settlement with any potential party."
In other words, Mylan may think it is close to a settlement, but the DOJ won't publicly back that claim up. It also won't even admit that it is looking into the matter, even though Mylan has said in SEC filings that it was subpoenaed back in November 2014.
Naturally, this is frustrating lawmakers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has already excoriated the DOJ over the figure reported by Mylan, arguing that it's lower than the law covering this kind of overcharging dictates.
"It's hard to understand why the Justice Department won't testify about allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges to the taxpayers," Grassley said in a statement regarding the DOJ's decision. "Accountability requires getting answers about why the overcharges happened and what, if anything, is being done to make sure the taxpayers are repaid for their losses and to keep this from happening again."
The back-and-forth over Medicaid classification isn't not the only legal matter Mylan's facing. The company's also under investigation generic price collusion, unrelated to the EpiPen, along with a number of other lawsuits listed earlier this month in the company's 10Q.