Originally published September 12 2005
California lawsuit expands to include 39 drug firms
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A California lawsuit against drug firms that overstated the price of their prescription drugs has expanded to include 39 pharmaceutical companies, including big names like GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
A 2003 lawsuit filed by Attorney General Bill Lockyer against Abbott Laboratories and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for falsely overstating drug prices, now has threatened to drag another three-dozen pharma firms to court on the charge.
California tax payers who pay many thousands of dollars every year in taxes to be spent by the government on health-care, would not be happy to know that they actually have been lining the coffers of healthcare workers, doctors and finally the pharma giants, under the guise the state's Medi-Cal re-imbursement program.
While the oldest defends Abbott and Wyeth denied the offense, the suit gathered momentum after being pooled along with many similar cases from 12 other states that now lie pending at the U.S. District Court in Boston.
Teresa Schilling, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office said after Lockyer scheduled a conference yesterday to disclose the list of companies being added as defendants, "We ended up devoting more and more resources to this investigation as it became clear how big the problem was".
Though the original complaint against Abbott and Wyeth suggested inflation of prices upto 1,000 per cent on some drugs, with modification of the suit to include the names of other companies, the pricing inflation maybe far higher.
Estimating the kind of damages that each company may have to pay running as high as $30m to $40m, the total damages from all companies is conservatively over $1.5 billion.
Appearing with the Attorney General at yesterday's news conference, he said, "These drugs are far too important to everyone in this country to allow this kind of fraud scheme to continue".
Though the pharma firms are understood to have not directly benefited from overstating the reimbursement value of drugs, they definitely enjoyed a healthy boost to sales, as doctors, pharmacies and health workers pocketed the unstated incentive for prescription of specific drugs.
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