The Israeli Teva Pharmaceutical Industries will pay $135 million to the State of Illinois to settle a lawsuit regarding a 14-year Medicaid program pricing fraud, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has announced.
Illinois lawsuit against Teva and 46 other pharmaceutical companies alleges that they had deliberately inflated the drug prices to increase their reimbursement. According to Madigan Illinois has so far recovered $436 million and is still litigating against nine companies.
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The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, in 2005 also alleged that some drugmakers had misreported what pharmacies paid for their drugs.
Teva said in response: “In order to focus on providing important and affordable treatments to patients, Teva and Watson decided to reach a settlement in these suits to prevent continuing litigation. The company continues to strenuously deny these allegations by the State and this suit and presented significant evidence in court to show that Illinois was completely aware of the pharmaceutical industry’s approach regarding reporting average wholesale prices and consequently did not suffer any damage.”
But Teva problems are not yet over. The Washington Post reported in December that Teva is among the drug companies currently under U.S. federal investigation for suspicion of forming a generic “drug cartel” to fix prices.
