Published 29 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4500
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4500

News

Four US drug companies pay $124m for defrauding Medicaid

Janice Hopkins Tanne

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Four US drug companies have made settlements with the US Department of Justice and agreed to pay $124m (£75m; {euro}84m) to resolve false claims that they submitted to the US Medicaid programme after a whistleblower complained.

The companies were Mylan Pharmaceuticals and UDL Laboratories, which paid $118m; Astra Zeneca, which paid $2.6m; and Ortho McNeil, which paid $3.4m.

The amount recovered by the US government will be shared between the federal government, the states, the Public Health Service’s drug pricing programme, and the whistleblower.

"The [US federal] False Claims Act allows a citizen [a whistleblower] to bring fraud to the attention of the government. If the government investigates and gets recovery, the citizen gets a share of the recovery," John Farley told the BMJ. He is assistant US attorney for the district of New Hampshire, part of the US Department of Justice. The suit was settled in New Hampshire.

. . . [Full text of this article]


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