Photo Illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images 
 
 After drawing public wrath and congressional scrutiny over its decision to raise the price of life-saving EpiPens to about $600 a pack, Mylan is trying to save its image. On Thursday the pharmaceutical company announced it would give a $300 coupon to lower- and middle-income customers who have to pay for the device out of pocket because they lack health coverage or have a high-deductible insurance plan (previously, it offered a $100 discount card). Meanwhile, CEO Heather Bresch appeared on CNBC's Squawk Box to try to quell some of the outrage by laying blame for the price hike at the feet of our “broken” health care system. 
 
 
 
 Jordan Weissmann Jordan Weissmann is Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent. 
 
 It was not an especially convincing performance. 
 
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 Before we get into Bresch's interview, a word about the coupon. Even at half price, EpiPens—which stop allergic reactions by injecting epinephrine into users—are still far more costly today than a few years ago. (Full disclosure: I carry one myself). When Mylan purchased the device in 2007, a pack cost about $100. Giving patients a 50 percent break after increasing prices 500 percent is not exactly a sweeping act of charity, even if it does help some families erase their entire co-pays. It's also worth noting that this latest move is very much in Mylan's own self-interest. Pharmaceutical companies don't typically make their profits off of middle-income patients who have to choose between gas money and their kids' allergy meds; rather, they count on big payments from insurers, who pass it on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Obscuring the true cost of drugs from the public through discounts and donations is part of the game pharma manufacturers play to avoid accidentally causing an uproar of the sort Mylan has witlessly stumbled into—which is to say, Bresch and her fellow executives were negligent in not offering that coupon sooner. 
 
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 And now about that CNBC spot. Mylan's main talking point seems to be that journalists have erred by focusing on the EpiPen's list price of $608 per pack. In reality, few patients actually pay that cost, the company notes, because they are either insured or receive a discount. Meanwhile, Mylan itself only makes about $274 on each sale—the rest goes to other companies in the drug supply chain, including wholesalers, pharmacies, and pharmacy benefit managers. It even put together a handy flow chart for PR purposes. 
 
 Mylan Pharmaceuticals 
 
 
 
 Bresch echoed this point in her interview with CNBC's Brian Sullivan. But then things got a bit weird, as the CEO declared that she too was outraged by the high cost of America's prescription drugs. 
 
 Mylan CEO to CNBC on EpiPen controversy: "No one is more frustrated than I am." https://t.co/kEGDc8L0oU pic.twitter.com/IC81mplgUv — CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) August 25, 2016 
 
 Brian Sullivan: But surely you must understand the outrage. Somebody I talked to last night said people are outraged because it seems outrageous. That the American Medical Association has said this is basically the same product it was in 2009. And yet the price has gone up 3 or 400 fold. 
 
 Heather Bresch: Look, no one’s more frustrated than me. I’ve been in this business for 25 years… 
 
 Sullivan: But you’re the one raising the price, how can you be frustrated? 
 
 Bresch: My frustration is there’s a list price of $608. There is a system. I laid out that there are four or five hands that the product touches and companies that it goes through before it ever gets to that patient at the counter. No one, everybody should be frustrated, I am hoping that this is an inflection point for this country. Our health care is in a crisis. It’s no different than the mortgage and financial crisis back in 2007. This bubble is going to burst. 
 
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 This would all make more sense—and feel less hollow—if Mylan were not actually profiting from its price increases. In that case, it could fairly argue that leechlike middlemen were pushing up costs while allowing manufacturers to take the blame. And, to be sure, there is some of that going on. As the New York Times notes, Mylan upped EpiPen list prices by about 30 percent in 2015, yet didn't record any additional revenue. That suggests pharmacy benefit managers—which deal with prescription drugs for insurers and other clients—managed to negotiate some fairly large discounts. But make no mistake, Mylan has cashed in. Per the Times: 
 
 In other years, though, sales of EpiPen rose by larger amounts and Mylan seemed to have retained about half the extra revenue that would be expected from its list price increases and prescription growth, according to Umer Raffat, an analyst at Evercore ISI. Even in 2015, he said, the rebates were kept by insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, and were not seen in lower prices paid by consumers. 
 
 “Someone definitely got that,” Mr. Raffat said of the rebates. “Who is that? It wasn’t passed on to customers.” 
 
 If you want to boil it down even further, think of it this way: Mylan is crying that it only gets to keep $274 each time someone buys an EpiPen pack. That's still nearly three times the list price when it acquired the product. 
 
 So, I am sure Bresch truly is frustrated by the fact that Mylan is taking most of the heat for price increases when other companies are profiting from them, too. But that doesn't excuse her company's own role. As the Times reports, the manufacturer appeared to be increasing the EpiPen's price to squeeze a few last inflated profits from the product before a generic competitor landed on the market. In a twist, though, the Food and Drug Administration rejected the generic, and the EpiPen's one major alternative was pulled from pharmacies due to reliability issues, leaving Mylan with an unexpected monopoly that it is now profiting from. Is it the company’s fault the government nixed its big new competitor? No. But nobody forced Mylan to jack up prices for one last big sales push. ||||| Mylan CEO Heather Bresch struggled Thursday to justify the repeated big price hikes of the company's lifesaving EpiPen devices as criticism continued that Mylan is gouging consumers with a retail cost of more than $600. 
 
 "No one's more frustrated than me," Bresch told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday when she was pressed on the question of why Mylan needed to have such a high price for EpiPens, and why she just didn't cut their price. 
 
 "Everybody should be frustrated," said Bresch, who in recent days has come under fire from U.S. Senators, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and patients who are outraged by EpiPen's 400 percent price increases in recent years. 
 
 Mylan, in response to that criticism, announced Thursday increased rebates to many consumers who rely on the devices, which are used to counteract a potentially fatal allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis. 
 
 The Clinton campaign quickly called those rebate "insufficient," and renewed called for a price slash on EpiPens. 
 
 "Discounts for selected customers without lowering the overall price of EpiPens are insufficient, because the excessive price will likely be passed on through higher insurance premiums," Clinton campaign spokesman Tyrone Gayle said. "Since there is no apparent justification for the price increase, Mylan should immediately lower the overall price of EpiPens." 
 
 
 
 Bresch argued that the problem of drug prices isn't with Mylan or even the pharmaceutical industry, but instead with a health-care system that often requires consumers to pay not just insurance premiums also out-of-pocket for prescription medications, sometimes to the full retail price. 
 
 That phenomenon, Mylan has said, has been exacerbated by the increase in the number of high-deductible health plans. 
 
 "The patient is paying twice," Bresch said. "They're paying full retail price at the counter, and they're paying higher premiums on their insurance. It was never intended that a consumer, that the patients would be paying list price, never. The system wasn't built for that." 
 
 "I am hoping that this is an inflection point for this country," Bresch said. "Our health care is in crisis. It's no different than the mortgage financial crisis back in 2007." 
 
 "My frustration is there's a list price of $608," said Bresch, who said that price reflects a system where there are "four or five hands that the product touches and companies that it goes through before it ever gets to that patient at the counter." 
 
 She was referring to the fact that after Mylan, intermediaries including wholesalers, retailers and pharmacy benefit managers add to the ultimate cost, and hence can increase the amount paid by patients. 
 
 "That $608 is a list price," Bresch said. "What Mylan takes from that, our net sales is $274, so $137 per pen," she said, referring to the fact that EpiPens are sold in packages of two devices. 
 
 She noted that Mylan has costs that include "manufacturing the product, distributing the product, enhancing the product, investing." 
 
 And she said that the company has been making efforts to have EpiPens placed in schools around the United States, and in other locations, implying that those efforts also boosted the cost of the devices. 
 
 But she also acknowledged that high retail prices of EpiPens in the United States effectively subsidize the cost of the devices when they are sold in Europe, at just $100 or $150. Many of the countries there have government-run health-care systems that limit drug prices charged by manufacturers, unlike the U.S. 
 
 "We do subsidize the rest of the world... and as a country we've made a conscious decision to do that," Bresch said. "And I think the world's a better place for it." 
 
 
 
 Bresch, whose father is Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has become just latest CEO whose face illustrates the ongoing controversy over rising drug prices, following on the heels of now-ex-Valeant Pharmaceuticals CEO Michael Pearson, and former Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli. 
 
 On Thursday, Manchin said, "I am aware of the questions my colleagues and many parents are asking and frankly I share their concerns about the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs." 
 
 "Today I heard Mylan's initial response, and I am sure Mylan will have a more comprehensive and formal response to those questions. I look forward to reviewing their response in detail and working with my colleagues and all interested parties to lower the price of prescription drugs and to continue to improve our health care system," he said. 
 
 
 
 "This is greed on steroids," legendary consumer advocate Ralph Nader told CNBC on Thursday. 
 
 When pressed again on "Squawk Box," why she just didn't cut the price of the devices, Bresch said, "Had we reduced the list price, I couldn't ensure that everyone who needs EpiPen gets one. So we went around the system. That's what we announced today." 
 
 Mylan will increase rebates to eligible consumers that will lower what they actually pay out of pocket for EpiPens. 
 
 "We responded this morning... ensuring that everyone who needs an EpiPen has an EpiPen," Bresch said. ||||| EpiPen, the life-saving allergy product, is now a $1 billion a year business for Mylan, a drug company that’s currently enduring a wave of bad publicity over the extraordinary surge in EpiPen pricing. In 2007, an EpiPen cost about $57. Today that price has skyrocketed to over $600—all for about $1 worth of injectable medicine. 
 
 
 
 EpiPen is an emergency medication that’s stabbed into a person experiencing anaphylactic shock, a life-threatening allergic reaction that can be triggered by anything from bee stings to food. I’ve never used an EpiPen, but as someone with a peanut allergy who once made his own trip to the ER after a particularly unfortunate restaurant experience (“these Chinese beans sure are crunchy...”) I can tell you that anaphylactic shock is really no fun. 
 
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 And while it’s incredibly scary, the worst case scenario is exceedingly rare: Between 1999 and 2009, deaths from anaphylactic shock in the United States ranged from 186 to 225 deaths per year. To put that in perspective, about 4,800 American adults die from choking on their food every year. But Mylan hasn’t yet found a way to extract $1 billion from the Heimlich maneuver. 
 
 “We’re only touching about 2 million, 2.5 million people and believe it’s well, well above that, people that are are risk for anaphylactic shock,” said Heather Bresch, Mylan’s CEO, in October of 2011. At the time, the EpiPen had roughly 98 percent market share, essentially dominating the market. 
 
 But Mylan wanted more, and a series of savvy maneuvers allowed them to get it. From FDA policy changes that expanded the number of consumers to which the product could be marketed, to legislation signed in 2013 that put EpiPens in schools across the country, the federal government has helped Mylan stack the deck for its product. Oh, and Sarah Jessica Parker helped too. 
 
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 Mylan acquired the EpiPen when it bought a group of medications from drug company Merck in 2007. At the time, the product only produced about $200 million in revenue. Today, according to Bloomberg, it makes about $1 billion per year for the formerly US-based company, now headquartered in the Netherlands after a corporate inversion last year. 
 
 
 
 The EpiPen is no longer covered by patent protection, but it still has no real competitors. Auvi-Q, the only thing that came close, was recalled for delivering faulty dosages almost a year ago. A competing drug company, Teva, didn’t win approval for its generic version of the EpiPen this year. Teva won’t try to win FDA approval again until at least 2017. 
 
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 So what can a company like Mylan do to increase profits on an old product, like EpiPen, when it’s already captured 98 percent market share and has no real competitors? 
 
 One option is to increase prices. The second is to increase the size of the market by convincing regulators, like the FDA, that the product should be marketed directly to a wider swath of the population. Then, a company can swoop in with high-profile (albeit backdoor) endorsements, from people like Sarah Jessica Parker, to increase awareness about the conditions that EpiPen treats. Or, better still, why not push to have institutions like public schools incentivized under federal law to carry the product? Mylan has spent the past decade doing all of the above. 
 
 People with expensive health insurance pay about $30 each for EpiPen. But not everyone is so lucky. Families with lower cost, high deductible plans are reportedly paying anywhere from $150 to $400 for a single pack of EpiPen. And parents who now see EpiPens as a necessity are fearing for their children’s lives when they can’t access the drug. Especially when the new normal established by public awareness campaigns is that people at risk for anaphylactic shock should have multiple EpiPens—at work, in the car, at home, at school, and on their person. 
 
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 Some members of Congress are not only calling for Mylan to immediately lower the price of EpiPen, but for investigations by the FTC within the next few months. What they don’t mention is that many of them helped create this situation, even if it was with the best of intentions. 
 
 
 
 “This outrageous increase in the price of EpiPens is occurring at the same time that Mylan Pharmaceutical is exploiting a monopoly market advantage that has fallen into its lap,” Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota said in a recent statement criticizing Mylan’s business practices. 
 
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 “Patients all over the U.S. rely on these products, including my own daughter,” she continued. “Not only should the Judiciary Committee hold a hearing, the Federal Trade Commission should investigate these price increases immediately. The Commission should also report to Congress on why these outrageous price increases have become common and propose solutions that will better protect consumers within 90 days.” 
 
 But Congress spent the past few years helping Mylan get into schools with virtually no thought to the fact that it had a monopoly on a life-saving drug. 
 
 In 2013, President Obama signed the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act. It was that rare piece of legislation that both Democrats and Republicans agreed upon (Klobuchar was a co-sponsor of the legislation). “This is something that will save children’s lives,” Obama said. 
 
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 The law did two things: It essentially protected anyone at public schools from any damage, provided they injected students with EpiPens in good faith. Which is to say, it was basically a Good Samaritan law for allergy-specific situations. Previously, first responders and public school nurses were the only people allowed to inject children with epinephrine if they were having an allergic reaction. And in the case of the school nurse, it was almost always the case that they could only inject the child if the EpiPen belonged to the child. The new legislation encouraged the stocking of EpiPen reserves, and made those reserves communal. 
 
 “Some people may know that Malia actually has a peanut allergy,” President Obama said at the time about his daughter. “She doesn’t have asthma, but obviously making sure that EpiPens are available in case of emergency in schools is something that every parent can understand.” 
 
 The bill also provided some financial incentives for schools that didn’t already stock the EpiPen to start stocking them. Which seems well and good, until you realize that without any real competition, you’re creating a situation where once that drug company has a presence in virtually every school in the country, it can raise prices. 
 
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 Not everyone liked the law when it was first proposed. Specifically, the National School Superintendents’ Association, AASA, objected on the grounds that it was going to be costly, especially since the auto-injectors would have to be replaced constantly. The EpiPen only has a shelf life of about 12 months. 
 
 Mylan has a program that distributes free EpiPens to schools. So I asked Mylan over email if its program restocks the product for a certain number of years after they expire. The company didn’t respond to my question and instead sent a generic prepared statement: “Since the start of the EpiPen4Schools® initiative in 2013, more than 700,000 free EpiPen® Auto-Injectors have been distributed, and more than 65,000 schools, approximately half of all U.S. schools, have participated in the program,” the relevant part of the statement reads. 
 
 If you’ve been stocking your home with EpiPens since around 2010, you probably noticed a change in your prescription. It was around that time that new guidelines from the FDA stated that patients who get the 0.3 mg dose of epinephrine in a single EpiPen should actually be prescribed two 0.3 mg doses. So EpiPen started selling the product exclusively in double packs. 
 
 
 
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 Another big switch at the FDA? The agency opened up the floodgates when it allowed EpiPens to be marketed to people who potentially had a risk of an anaphylactic reaction in 2008. Previously the product could only be marketed to people who had a proven anaphylactic response to allergens. 
 
 “The labeling change to the Indications Language in the EpiPEN label was approved in 2008 to clarify the indication,” FDA spokesperson Theresa Eisenman told me over email, referring to whom the product could be marketed to specifically. 
 
 “The aim of using EpiPen is to prevent a life-threatening situation (i.e. full-blown anaphylaxis with circulatory /respiratory collapse etc.) Clinically, there is a broad spectrum of anaphylaxis presentations that require clinical judgment. The goal of using EpiPen is to prevent symptoms from progressing.” 
 
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 So where’s all that money that Mylan’s making going? Some is presumably going to actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who was approached by Mylan to talk about her son’s life-threatening allergy through the campaign Anaphylaxis for Reel™. The campaign, whose name was trademarked this past May, encourages people to go online and share stories about how severe allergies have affected their families, and make an “anaphylaxis action plan.” 
 
 You’d be forgiven if you mistook Anaphylaxis for Reel™ as a charity group. The YouTube page for The Doctors TV show on CBS even misidentifies the group as a nonprofit organization, and doesn’t acknowledge that during Sarah Jessica Parker’s appearance on the show she’s speaking on behalf of Mylan. 
 
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 From the YouTube description: 
 
 Actress Sarah Jessica Parker opens up about her son James Wilkie’s life-threatening allergy, and the terrifying day that he went into anaphylactic shock. She also shares her passion for the non-profit “Anaphylaxis for Reel.” 
 
 Anaphylaxis for Reel™ isn’t a charity. It’s an awareness campaign, started by Mylan and aimed at parents and the roughly 5 percent of American kids who have a food allergy. And there’s nothing wrong with awareness campaigns. But Mylan isn’t raising awareness out of the kindness of its heart, nor would we expect it to. Mylan is in business to make money, and hired Sarah Jessica Parker to be a spokesperson to, by extension, sell more EpiPens. 
 
 
 
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 Sarah Jessica Parker never says the brand name EpiPen when she does TV appearances for Mylan. As you can see in one example below, she says her son “always has two epinephrine auto-injectors and he always has them on his person. Always, always, always.” 
 
 Of course, EpiPen doesn’t have any competition, so if you go to the doctor and ask for an epinephrine auto-injector, you can guess what you’ll get. Even if a competitor entered the market tomorrow, they’d be no threat to EpiPen in the short term. And Mylan CEO Heather Bresch has acknowledged in recent earnings calls that generic competitors would probably only help expand reach. EpiPen is essentially the generic name for this product in the minds of consumers—the Kleenex of plastic tubes you stab yourself in the leg with when you think you’re going to die. 
 
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 We reached out to Sarah Jessica Parker’s publicist on Monday morning but did not receive an on-the-record statement by press time, Tuesday afternoon. 
 
 
 
 Update, 4:11pm: Sarah Jessica Parker’s publicist sent me the following statement about her experiences with Mylan and her social media posts about the company: 
 
 Sarah Jessica was a spokesperson for Mylan’s anaphylaxis awareness campaign. Epinephrine auto-injectors have been a vital part of her family’s health care, as recommended by the family pediatrician to help manage her son’s life-threatening peanut allergy.‎ She has always been forthright about her connection to this campaign, both in background materials sent to press in preparation for interviews, as well as in her personal social media posts. 
 
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 Update, August 25th, 1:10pm: Sarah Jessica Parker has officially severed her ties with Mylan and said on Instragram that she has been, “left disappointed, saddened and deeply concerned by Mylan’s actions.” 
 
 Some people seem to be under the impression that an EpiPen is all you need for a severe allergic reaction. But it’s really just the first, life-saving step in treatment. The goal is to open your airways so you can be transported to a hospital and treated by doctors. Which is part of the reason I’ve stopped filling my prescription for EpiPen. Perhaps stupidly. I’m taking the calculated risk that I live in a major city and can get to a hospital in time, should I have a severe allergic reaction. 
 
 
 
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 Whenever someone offers me food with nuts or peanuts and I explain that I’m allergic, they ask if it’s alright that the food is in the same room as me. I have to explain that it’s only when I actually eat the nuts that I have a reaction. They still give me a sideways look, like they’re endangering my health and don’t believe that I’m perfectly safe. 
 
 
 
 In reality, anaphylactic shock from airborne exposure is so incredibly rare that if you think your allergy can be triggered by being in the same room as peanuts and you’re not literally living in a bubble right now, it probably can’t. 
 
 And the most likely type of accidental exposure, peanuts touching the skin, doesn’t even cause anaphylactic shock. One double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 2003 took 30 kids with severe peanut allergies and spread peanut butter over their skin for 15 minutes. A full 27 of the kids experienced no adverse reaction of any kind. The three other kids got mild rashes from the peanut butter. 
 
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 The awareness campaigns of companies like Mylan have worked. But have they worked too well? Should every kid with even a hint of a sniffle around food be carrying an EpiPen with her at all times? An earnings call from this past February might give people around the rest of the world some inkling of things to come. Mylan continues to expand the market for the EpiPen in the US, but there’s a great big world out there. 
 
 “Not only do I see it throughout Europe as an opportunity, but as we continue to look and add enhancements and how we bring EpiPen to the market and various other regions around the world,” CEO Bresch said. “We do see, like I said, a lot of opportunity even outside of Europe with the rest of the world, as we continue to invest around EpiPen and the awareness of anaphylaxis.” 
 
 You know what’s cooler than a billion dollars? A billion Euros. 
 
 Correction 4:08pm: This article originally misstated that Mylan had purchased Merck. Mylan had purchased a group of medications from Merck that included the EpiPen. ||||| Sarah Jessica Parker attends the 2016 PEN America Literary Gala. Credit: J. Countess/Getty Images 
 
 Sarah Jessica Parker has cut ties with Mylan, the manufacturer of EpiPen, a portable injector that can stop a life-threatening allergic reaction. Her reason: The company has steadily increased the price for a pack of two from around $100 in 2007 to more than $600 in recent years, a hike of more than 400 percent. 
 
 “I’m left disappointed, saddened and deeply concerned by Mylan’s actions,” the former Sex and the City star, 51, wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday, August 25. “I do not condone this decision and I have ended my relationship with Mylan as a direct result of it.” 
 
 She continued, “I hope they will seriously reconsider the outpouring of voices of those millions of people who are dependent on the device, and take swift action to lower the cost to be more affordable for whom it is a life-saving necessity.” 
 
 A photo posted by SJP (@sarahjessicaparker) on Aug 25, 2016 at 4:02am PDT 
 
 According to The New York Times, Mylan has imposed two 15 percent increases a year for the past few years. 
 
 
 
 Parker had been a paid spokesperson for Mylan in May and spoke to Us Weekly about her 13-year-old son James Wilkie’s life-threatening peanut allergy and revealed that he carried two EpiPens. In the interview, Parker told Us she was surprised to learn that 43 million Americans are at risk for anaphylaxis, and every six minutes, food allergy reactions send someone to the emergency room. 
 
 
 
 Meanwhile, the Emmy winner isn’t the only famous face taking aim at Mylan. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton released a statement on Wednesday, August 24, in which she called the price hikes “outrageous, and just the latest example of a company taking advantage of its consumers.” 
 
 “It’s wrong when drug companies put profits ahead of patients, raising prices without justifying the value behind them,” Clinton, 68, said. 
 
 On Thursday, Mylan announced the company will be offering coupons covering up to $300 “for patients in health plans who face higher out-of-pocket costs.” 
 
 “As a mother, I can assure you, the last thing that we would ever want is no one to have their EpiPen due to price,” Mylan CEO Heather Bresch said in an interview with CNBC Thursday. “Our response has been to take that immediate action making sure everyone has an EpiPen.” 
 
 Bresch defended the price hike by pointing to the marketing and distribution costs of EpiPens. 
 
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– As lawmakers deal with their own awkward situation related to the jacked-up costs of the EpiPen, a celebrity is taking her own stand. Sarah Jessica Parker—who Gizmodo notes has campaigned for anaphylaxis awareness for manufacturer Mylan in the name of her son, who has a severe peanut allergy—announced Thursday she's severed ties with the company because of the EpiPen's ever-increasing sticker shock, Us Weekly reports. "I'm left disappointed, saddened, and deeply concerned by Mylan's actions," she wrote in a Thursday Instagram post, calling the cost for many people "prohibitive." "I do not condone this decision and I have ended my relationship with Mylan as a direct result of it." Parker added she hoped the company would "seriously consider the outpouring of voices" on the issue and "take swift action" to make the device more affordable. It's a public outcry Mylan has started to address by expanding its assistance programs and offering a savings card. "As a mother, I can assure you, the last thing that we would ever want is no one to have their EpiPen due to price," Mylan CEO Heather Bresch told CNBC Thursday, adding, "No one's more frustrated than me" about the broken health-care system she says is responsible for steep drug costs. This piece at Slate digs deep into that statement.