Senators probing EpiPen price hike received donations from Mylan PAC

I notice the author of this article mention Democratic members of the committee two paragraphs before they mention the donation to the committee's chairman, a Republican.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/26/senators-probing-epipen-price-hike-received-donations-from-mylan-pac.html

Jacob Pramuk
Aug. 26, 2016

A political committee for Mylan has donated to most of the Senate committee that has asked the drugmaker to explain price increases for allergy treatment EpiPen and could grill executives in a hearing on the matter.

The Mylan Inc. PAC has given $13,500 to four current members of the Senate Judiciary Committee since 2014, including $5,000 to ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and $5,000 to the Senate's likely next Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Since 1999, the PAC has donated more than $60,000 to 11 current members of the 20-person judiciary committee. Most of those donations came after 2008.

This illustrates the reach of Mylan's political effort, which extended to candidates and political action committees in 22 states between December, 2014, to the end of 2015. The Mylan PAC had $95,500 in political contributions for that period, while incurring $319,000 in indirect lobbying expenses as part of trade association membership.

The judiciary committee's chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, this week requested more information from Mylan about EpiPen pricing amid furor over the its 400 percent cost increase in recent years. Grassley's campaign committee received a $5,000 donation from the Mylan PAC in 2006, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

In all, the campaigns of Leahy and Schumer have received $15,000 and $9,500 from the PAC, respectively.

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch also personally gave $2,700 to Schumer's campaign committee in June. She previously contributed $2,400 and $1,000 to Leahy and Grassley's committees in 2009 and 2006, respectively.

The $60,000 the Mylan PAC gave those senators' campaigns makes up only about 7 percent of the roughly $900,000 in contributions it has given to committees since 1998. It is only a meager sum in the high-spending American political process. In addition, nothing points to those senators doing Mylan favors because of the donations.

Still, it raises questions about Mylan's links to the committee ahead of its possible wider scrutiny of the company's pricing.

A spokeswoman for Grassley said he takes legal contributions that come with no strings attached and do not affect his Senate work.

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Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., judiciary committee members who did not get contributions from the Mylan PAC, received donations from the generic pharmaceutical association PAC. Blumenthal has received $3,000 since 2014, while Flake got $2,500 in 2014.

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