WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department said on Monday that it and 16 states had joined two whistleblower lawsuits filed against Wyeth which allege the drugmaker failed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates to Medicaid.
The lawsuits accuse Wyeth of giving hospitals steep discounts on the drugs Protonix Oral and Protonix IV, which reduce stomach acid, with the goal of winning the retail business of the same patients once they were released from the hospital.
The lawsuits, which were originally brought in Massachusetts by two whistleblowers, allege that Wyeth failed to give the Medicaid program the same discounts that it gave private hospitals, the Justice Department said in a statement.
The result was that Wyeth allegedly failed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates due to state Medicaid programs for the drugs. Medicaid is the joint federal-state healthcare program for the poor.
“The best price reporting requirement is designed to assure that the nation’s healthcare programs for the poor - the Medicaid programs - are treated equally with drug companies’ best commercial customers,” Michael Loucks, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement.
Wyeth spokesman Douglas Petkus said the company would fight the allegations in court. “The company believes that its pricing calculations were correct and intends to defend itself vigorously in these actions,” he said.
The states which joined the suits were California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Mail this postPopularity: 64% [?]
Leave a Reply