Conway
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Legal Newsline) - Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway announced a $1.75 million settlement on Friday with a pharmaceutical company to recover funds for the Kentucky Medicaid program.
The settlement with Forest Pharmaceuticals is the latest in a series of settlements regarding average wholesale price lawsuit filed by Conway's office against 47 of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the nation.
"Kentucky taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for inflated drug prices," Conway said. "I am pleased that we were able to recover this money for a vital state program and for taxpayers."
The lawsuits filed by Conway's office allege that Forest and other drug company defendants published inflated, deceptive and false AWPs for their drugs that did not bear relationships to the real prices they charged their customers. The Medicaid program in the state of Kentucky heavily relied on the published AWPs to come up with the rates for Medicaid drug reimbursement. The allegedly artificial difference between the inflated published prices and the real prices led to the state Medicaid program paying millions of dollars more in drug reimbursements than it was supposed to.
Forest manufactures Levothroid, a hypothyroidism drug, Lexapro, a depression and generalized anxiety disorder drug, and Celexa, a popular depression drug, in addition to many other drug products.