Two days ago our country took one of the bigger steps backwards in a month full of backward steps when 52 senators voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as the new US Attorney General. There was one Democrat who voted with Republicans. His name is Joe Manchin of West Virginia. In unrelated news, Big Pharma goon Mylan, the company that said it spent $1 billion to repackage the EpiPen and then jack up the price, may be finished with their Department of Justice dealings, having already paid out half a billion in a settlement over defrauding the Medicaid system to a non Jeff Sessions run Department of Justice. This is important because it recently came to light that the Federal Trade Commission was possibly investigating Mylan for anti-trust violations.
Mylan, in a statement, said the Federal Trade Commission asked it "months ago" for information about its anti-allergy EpiPen "as part of a preliminary investigation."
The disclosure comes nearly five months after two United States senators asked the FTC to investigate whether Mylan violated antitrust laws to protect the auto-injector EpiPen from competition.
Mylan’s CEO Heather Bresch has a maiden name, that rhymes with Joe Manchin.
Bresch's Senator father Manchin also stood by her, and she credits him with teaching her at an early age the harshness of politics, a lesson she says has helped her stay strong through other public scandals—and perhaps she has in mind this week while under fire of accusations of EpiPen price-gouging. "My father said to me from the very beginning, 'Being a Manchin, there's going to be good things that get you and there's going to be bad things that get you, so Heather if you want just all the good, it’s not going to happen. So you better be willing and your skin better be thick,'" she told me last year.
"You know I can sit back all day and say things aren’t fair, and I've just learned over my years and experiences that you know what, the world’s not fair," she continued. “I just think all that’s built a lot of character, that I'm fortunate. Things may not always have been pleasant or pretty to go through.”
She’s right about that. The world is not fair. See, the Federal Trade Commission can give Mylan more problems, and hopefully will, but one thing they cannot do is bring criminal anti-trust violations without the Department of Justice.
In some circumstances, the FTC can go directly to federal court to obtain an injunction, civil penalties, or consumer redress. For effective merger enforcement, the FTC may seek a preliminary injunction to block a proposed merger pending a full examination of the proposed transaction in an administrative proceeding. The injunction preserves the market's competitive status quo.
The FTC also may refer evidence of criminal antitrust violations to the DOJ. Only the DOJ can obtain criminal sanctions.
Even if Mylan somehow is sanctioned out of business which will not happen, CEO Heather Bresch will land softly on her feet under a golden parachute made out of a rigged system.