Your head feels foggy. Your throat starts closing. An ambulance would take too long. There are no doctors nearby. You need medicine – and you don’t care how much it costs.

This is the choke point that has been exploited by the manufacturers of EpiPen, an essential drug used to immediately relieve the life-threatening symptoms of allergy attacks.

According to PBS, the price of EpiPens has skyrocketed, costing some patients more than $1,200.

Jessica Lee, a WSU student who worked in a pharmacy for five years, heard the complaints of customers every day.

“(In my pharmacy), there were a couple customers who were lifelong because it was a mom and pop store,” Lee said. “As the cost of EpiPens rose, so did their copay. They could not afford their medication anymore. Some had to choose between paying rent and buying an EpiPen.”

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that according to NBC News, the cost of producing one EpiPen is about $10 retail.

The plight of EpiPen users has not gone unheard. Lee herself was upset with the EpiPen manufacturer, Mylan.

“I just wish (the CEO of Mylan) could spend one day in a pharmacy,” Lee said. “Not everyone can afford the insurance that covers it, leaving them with a $600 copay. That’s more than rent.”

But why is the price so high compared to the cost? Far too often, it seems, the blame is leveled on the greedy capitalists salivating over profits in tall skyscrapers.

If only they could be regulated and prevented from gouging poor citizens.

What if I told you this very problem was an example of too much regulation and not too little?

Mylan attempted to deflect criticism by claiming inaccurately that insurance companies will pay the price and it won’t affect those who need the medicine.

If the cost of creating an EpiPen is only the cost of two lattes, one might ask: where are the competitors?

If the going rate is $600, it goes to reason that everyone and their uncle would be going down to Wal-mart, buying the $10 ingredients, and setting up shop in their garage – even if they undercut Mylan by $100, they still rake in a tidy sum of $490.

So why isn’t this happening?

Our old friend the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which approves all medical products, has ensured that Mylan is the only manufacturer of EpiPens by completely choking out any and all competition.

Earlier this year, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries attempted to bring their own version of EpiPen to the market. They were denied by the FDA, which delayed their release until at least 2017, according to FiercePharma, a news organization that reports on the pharmaceutical industry.

Mylan’s knight in shining armor, the FDA, also disallowed a French pharmaceutical company which had been competing with the original EpiPen, citing “potential inaccurate dosage delivery.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office also answered Mylan’s calls for aid, having enforced a legal monopoly on the creation of epinephrine auto-injectors and helping the FDA tag-team any potential cost-lowering competitors out of the market.

Some U.S. congressmen have suggested reforms to prevent this kind of behavior in the future, ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ calls for free pharmaceutical drugs for all, to Sen. Rand Paul calling for the FDA to be refurbished.

However, both of these options seem a tad optimistic, especially in today’s age of hyper-partisanship.

A growing alternative has been simply putting epinephrine, the active ingredient and namesake of the EpiPen, into a syringe and injecting it. But this could be unsafe, as most are accustomed to the auto-injecting traditional EpiPen.

“You absolutely need an EpiPen,” Lee said. “Or you could try to go to the hospital. If your allergy is bad enough, you could die before you get there.”

So for the students at WSU who need EpiPens, and have heard the slogan from the side of the box, “Because Every Second Counts”, they might quickly find out that when it comes to monopoly, every dollar counts as well.

The entire EpiPen scandal, as it has come to be known, is evidence that the U.S. regulatory scheme needs massive reworking.

Before we choose to hand over the reins on this scandal to some anti-trust agency, why don’t we first ask the question: can this problem be fixed with more freedom, rather than less?

There was more than one large competitor attempting to enter the market for auto-injecting EpiPens – and each of them was stopped by the regulator. Clearly, the problem is not with the competitors, but rather with the regulator itself.

Capitalism is a system of profit and loss. If we take away loss by removing competition, we’ll find that corporate cronies will profit and the rest of us will pay the price.

Harrison Conner is a junior economics major from Stanwood. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of The Office of Student Media.