Medi-Cal AWP fraud suit expands
Executive Summary
California Attorney General sues 39 pharmaceutical manufacturers for reporting inflated prices to the state's Medi-Cal Medicaid program. The suit, filed Aug. 25 in U.S. District Court in Boston, is an expansion of a 2003 California whistleblower suit against Abbott and Wyeth. Suit adds 38 defendants; Wyeth was dropped from the list of defendants after further investigation, the AG's office said. The defendant includes a variety of manufacturers: including both brand firms (Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Novartis) as well as generic firms (Roxane, Mylan, Sandoz and Teva). Notably absent from the suit are Lilly, Merck, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. The suit alleges that the firms defrauded the state by reporting inflated wholesale prices to pricing compendia, which Medi-Cal used to determine physician reimbursement rates. California is one of a number of states suing manufacturers for pricing fraud based on data provided by whistleblowing pharmacy Ven-A-Care (1"The Pink Sheet" Oct. 1, 2001, p. 12)...
You may also be interested in...
Merck, Lilly, J&J Pricing Practices Praised By AWP "Whistleblower"
Merck, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and DuPont are examples of manufacturers who do not market the "spread" between average wholesale prices and actual prices, Ven-A-Care President Zachary Bentley told a Congressional hearing on AWPs Sept. 21.
EU Regulatory Assessors Get AI Boost In Reaching Scientific Decisions
The European Medicines Agency is training scientific staff working for the European medicines regulatory network in how to use a new AI-powered search engine that allows them to easily retrieve information on regulatory precedents.
EU Parliament Stricter Than Council On Medicines And Medical Devices Packaging
The EU Parliament's Environment, Public Health and Food Safety committee takes a compromise position with regards to the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. Medicines and medical devices should be exempt, but only until 2035, at which point the European Commission should check whether the development of materials and the recycling process have progressed, and may adjust this exemption accordingly.