(CA) State to add drug firms to lawsuit

[question everything]

State to add drug firms to lawsuit

By Alex Veiga
ASSOCIATED PRESS

August 25, 2005

LOS ANGELES – A slew of U.S. pharmaceutical companies will be named as defendants in a lawsuit accusing drug makers of bilking California taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars by inflating drug prices, state officials said yesterday.

As many as three dozen companies will be added to a lawsuit filed in 2003 by Attorney General Bill Lockyer against Abbott Laboratories Inc. and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, said Teresa Schilling, a spokeswoman for Lockyer.

(snip)

In the original complaint, Lockyer claimed Abbott, with headquarters in suburban Chicago, and Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth, inflated some drug prices by about 1,000 percent.

In one example cited in the suit, the state claimed that in 1996, Abbott reported that a gram dose of one antibiotic cost more than $55 when the actual cost was about $6.


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050825/news_1b25drugs.html

[RONSTOO]

1. its sheer greed that will be the downfall of this country

imho

[joeunderdog]

2. you are so right

what exemplifies the marriage of business and politics for pure profit more than PharmCo, OilCo and BushCo?

People blame the welfare mothers for their tax burden. Their take home pay is in the pockets of Oil, Pharms and Defense so they close more schools.

Sick.

[Rose Siding]

3. Big story, NYT: California Accuses Drug Companies of Fraud

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 - The attorney general of California sued 39 drug companies on Thursday, accusing them of bilking the state of hundreds of millions of dollars by overcharging for medicines.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer charged that the drug makers, including some of the world's leading pharmaceutical concerns, defrauded the state's Medi-Cal system for at least the past decade. Mr. Lockyer said the drug manufacturers charged Medi-Cal as much as 10 times the price for some drugs as they charged others, like private pharmacies and hospitals.

Medi-Cal is the state's version of the federal Medicaid program for the poor, which is jointly financed by the states and the federal government. Drug costs account for about $4 billion of Medi-Cal's $34 billion annual budget.

"We're dragging these drug companies into the court of law because they're gouging the public on basic life necessities," Mr. Lockyer said at a news conference here. "This scheme has cost California taxpayers potentially hundreds of millions of dollars and is jeopardizing the public health by diverting money away from patient care."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/national/26drug.html