On Dec. 7, the Justice Department announced that it had settled “average wholesale pricing” cases against Abbott Laboratories Inc. for $126.5 million, B. Braun Medical Inc. for $14.7 million and Roxane Laboratories Inc., which is now known as Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc., for $280 million. Each company allegedly inflated the prices of numerous drugs. The government claimed the companies sold the drugs to health care providers at markedly lower prices than the published average wholesale prices paid by the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The settlements are part of a long-running multidistrict litigation in the District of Massachusetts, In re Pharmaceutical Industry Average Wholesale Price Litigation. It was originally filed in the Southern District of Florida as U.S. ex. Rel. Ven-A-Care of the Florida Keys Inc. v. Abbott Laboratories. Ven-A-Care provides home infusion services to HIV-positive patients and to the elderly with kidney failure.
