“Our office will continue to hold accountable those who defraud the Medicaid program and taxpayers by inflating and fraudulently reporting drug prices,” Coakley said in a statement. “We were able to recover millions of dollars for the state’s Medicaid program.”
The suit against the 13 companies was brought by the Medicaid fraud division of Coakley’s office. It accused the drug makers of knowingly submitting inflated prices to industry price reporting services between 1995 and 2003. The suit was initially lodged against Warrick Pharmaceuticals Corp., a unit of the former Schering-Plough Corp., which was bought by Merck for $41 billion in 2009.
Officials at Merck corporate headquarters in Whitehouse Station, NJ, did not immediately return a phone call and e-mail message seeking comment.
The suit alleged Warrick reported false and inflated prices to services such as First Data Bank for a trio of treatments for asthma and other respiratory diseases. More than 40 state Medicaid programs -- including the Massachusetts’ -- as well as commercial health insurers, rely on the reporting services to determine their reimbursements to pharmacies that fill prescriptions.
Companies that previously settled with Massachusetts as a result of the suit are Mylan Inc., Par Pharmaceutical Inc., Actavis Elizabeth LLC, Dey Inc., Barr Laboratories Inc., Duramed Pharmaceuticals Inc., Ethex Corp., Roxane Laboratories Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Ivax Corp., Watson Pharma Inc., and Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.
