Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10045
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Sales Agent Makes Allegations About Improper Anemia Drug Marketing Against J&J's Ortho Biotech Unit
Kaiser Network Daily Reports 2007 May 10
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=44835
Full text:
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday examined documents provided by Dean McClellan, a former sales agent for Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Biotech unit, who has joined a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the company offered excessive financial incentives for doctors to prescribe anemia drug Procrit and encouraged doctors to prescribe higher-than-approved doses (Won Tesoriero/Johnson, Wall Street Journal, 5/10).
Federal law prohibits pharmaceutical companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines that are given in pill form and purchased by patients at pharmacies, but companies can rebate part of the price to doctors who purchase treatments that are administered in their offices. Anemia drugs are injected or delivered intravenously in doctors’ offices or dialysis centers (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 5/9).
McClellan, who says he was forced to retire in 2004 because of age discrimination, saved 15,000 pages of company memos, contracts and other documents. The documents show that after Amgen’s competing anemia drug Aranesp was introduced in 2004, Ortho offered new discounts to health care providers who purchased Procrit, even when they already were buying the drug at a reduced price and were receiving rebates.
One memo calculated that under the program, a physician who purchased nearly $1 million of Procrit over 15 months would receive a check for $237,885, the Journal reports. A separate program offered hospitals discounts across J&J’s product line if they used Procrit at least 75% of the time when prescribing anemia drugs. In addition, Ortho created a “Right of First Refusal” contract requiring doctors to allow J&J to make a counteroffer if Amgen’s price for Aranesp was lower than the Procrit price.
In his suit, McClellan also alleges that Ortho in the mid-1990s began encouraging doctors to prescribe a high dose of Procrit that was not FDA-approved. McClellan said that Ortho offered no-cost “trial” samples of Procrit to doctors who agreed to try the higher dose (Wall Street Journal, 5/10).
Broadcast Coverage American Public Media’s “Marketplace” on Wednesday reported on anemia drugs. The segment includes comments from Eric Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Max Jacobs, an analyst at Mehta Partners (Palmer, “Marketplace,” American Public Media, 5/9). Audio and a transcript of the segment are available online.
