Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18200

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Publication type: news

McQuillen W
AstraZeneca to Pay $103 Million to Settle Drug-Pricing Suit
Bloomberg Businessweek 2010 Jun 19
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-19/astrazeneca-to-pay-103-million-to-settle-drug-pricing-suit.html

Full text:

AstraZeneca Plc, the U.K.’s second- largest drugmaker, will pay $103 million to settle claims it overcharged for some medicines in the U.S., court records show.
AstraZeneca’s accord will end claims by third-party payers who paid some of their insured’s Medicare for the Zoladex or Pulmicort Respules products and other consumers and third-party payers who paid cash or a co-payment for the drugs outside of Medicare. Massachusetts plaintiffs will receive $13 million, while those outside the state will get $90 million, according to papers filed yesterday in federal court in Boston.
Consumers will receive 11 percent of the settlement while the rest will go to insurers, according to a statement by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, the law firm that brought suit. The proposed settlement of the class-action suit requires court approval to become final. AstraZeneca, which denied wrongdoing, said the settlement was in the company’s best interest.
“AstraZeneca has competed responsibly with respect to pricing and marketing of our medicines, and we firmly believe that we have acted at all times in accordance with the law,” Tony Jewell, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs will be paid one-third of the settlement funds, according to court records.
The plaintiffs accused the company of illegally seeking to boost market share by selling medicines to physicians at steep discounts to the published average wholesale price that consumers, pension funds and others paid, while secretly encouraging doctors to claim full reimbursement from insurers.
Zoladex is used to treat prostate and breast cancer. Pulmicort Respules is used to prevent asthma.
The case is In Re. Pharmaceutical Industry Average Wholesale Price Litigation, MDL No. 1456 or 01-cv-12257, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).