United Therapeutics Agrees to Pay $210 Million to Resolve Allegations that it Paid Kickbacks

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https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/united-therapeutics-agrees-pay-210-million-resolve-allegations-it-paid-kickbacks-through

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
District of Massachusetts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, December 20, 2017

United Therapeutics Agrees to Pay $210 Million to Resolve Allegations that it Paid Kickbacks Through a Co-Pay Assistance Foundation

BOSTON – The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today that pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics Corporation (UT), a seller of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) drugs, has agreed to pay $210 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by paying kickbacks to Medicare patients through a purportedly independent charitable foundation.
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UT sells a number of PAH drugs, including Adcirca, Remodulin, Tyvaso, and Orenitram. As part of today’s settlement, the government alleged that UT used a foundation, which claims 501(c)(3) status for tax purposes, as a conduit to pay the co-pay obligations of thousands of Medicare patients taking its PAH drugs. From February 2010 through January 2014, the government alleged, UT routinely obtained data from the foundation detailing how many patients on each UT PAH drug the foundation had assisted and how much the foundation had spent on those patients. The government alleged that UT used this data to decide the amount to donate to the foundation. At the same time, the government alleged, UT had a policy of not permitting Medicare patients to participate in its free drug program (which was open to other financially needy patients) even if those Medicare patients could not afford their co-pays for UT drugs. Instead, in order to generate revenue from Medicare and to induce purchases of its PAH drugs, UT allegedly referred Medicare patients prescribed its PAH drugs to the foundation, which resulted in claims to Medicare to cover the cost of those drugs.
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