The headline is Outcry Over EpiPen Prices Hasn’t Made Them Lower. Excerpt:
By August, the company, which sells thousands of drugs and says it fills one in every 13 American prescriptions, was making mea culpas and renewing its promise to “do what’s right, not what’s easy,” as the company’s mission statement goes.
* * *
To understand Mylan’s culture, consider a series of conversations that began inside the company in 2014. * * * (Former executives who related this and other anecdotes requested anonymity because they had nondisclosure agreements or feared retaliation. Aspects of their accounts were disputed by Mylan.) * * *
* * * At one gathering, executives shared their concerns with Mylan’s chairman, Robert Coury.
Mr. Coury replied that he was untroubled. He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves. Critics in Congress and on Wall Street, he said, should do the same. And regulators at the Food and Drug Administration? They, too, deserved a round of anatomically challenging self-fulfillment.
* * *
Those top leaders’ responses are a far cry from the message on Mylan’s website, which says that “we challenge every member of every team to challenge the status quo,” and that “we put people and patients first, trusting that profits will follow.”
But Mylan is a prime example of how easy it is for leaders to say one thing publicly and act differently in private.
