Health care

If you’re reading this the day it’s published it means this is the due date for extensions for partnerships and corporations. If you work in a tax office and things are quiet you might want to consider another job. (This is an inside joke directed at a former employee who struck out on her own. If you need bookkeeping in Vegas I know a qualified person to handle that. Seriously.)

I thought today would be the perfect day for me to announce my candidacy for president with a few tax policies I’ll sign into law via executive order if elected. Some of you might be darn excited about this unwelcome event as you think I’m a Democrat. Other might be excited because they think I’m a Republican. The truth is I’m neither. I prefer to waffle between both side of the aisle or as the police call it: walking in a drunken stupor.

The health care system is broke in the U.S.; few doubt that fact. Mylan NV and its CEO Heather Bresch symbolize everything wrong with medicine today. In this short post I will show you how to ferret out BS from public companies using their own words. Bresch is on CNBC this morning defending Mylan and the company’s position.

In the interview Bresch makes several comments about the price increase of a Mylan product: EpiPens. Prices increased steadily from $164.98 for a two-pack in May 2011 to $608.61 for the same two-pack in May of 2016. Bresch uttered frustration because the price increases are the result of all the middlemen touching the product (“…four or five hands”). Bresch said, “That $608 is a list price. What Mylan takes from that, our net sales is $274, so $137 per pen.”