Drug Maker to Pay $346 Million in Medicaid Case (Ashcroft related)

[Keirsey]

A big drug company has agreed to pay a big fine, for fraudulently pricing the allergy drug Claritin.

US attorney Pat Meehan says a subsidiary of Kenilworth, NJ-based pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough Corporation has agreed to plead guilty and pay fines and penalties totaling $346 million.

Meehan says Schering resisted the HMO Cigna's demands for a lower price for Claritin -- because under Medicaid rules it would have to give Medicaid its best commercial price.

So instead, Meehan says, Schering paid a what it called a "data fee" -- under-the-table "patient education" grants:


"This incentive, Schering believed, would keep Claritin on the HMO's list of drugs without triggering a reduction in the price it charged Medicaid for the drug. Schering called it 'value added.' We called it a kickback."

The case came to light when three whistleblowers notified the feds. They stand to share $31 million under the federal whistleblower rules.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia began investigating the allegations in 1999.

http://www.kyw1060.com/news_story_detail.cfm?newsitemid=39461

John Ashcroft: Attorney General And Defender Of The Confederacy

Corporate Connections:

AT&T; Microsoft; Schering-Plough; Enterprise Rent-A-Car; Monsanto

As a senator from Missouri, John Ashcroft received generous campaign contributions from companies, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Monsanto, which were based in his home state. But a company didn’t have to be from Missouri to get some attention from the senator. Ashcroft was one of only a handful of senators sponsoring a bill that extended the patent on Schering-Plough’s ultra-profitable allergy pill, Claritin. Extending the patent, which expires in 2002, would save the company billions of dollars in potential revenue. The bill died in committee, but Schering-Plough still gave Ashcroft $50,000 for his failed 2000 Senate bid. Schering-Plough donated the money to Ashcroft’s joint fundraising committee, which Ashcroft set up with the National Republican Senatorial Committee to encourage unlimited soft money contributions from corporations that could not legally contribute to his main campaign committee. (Check out Schering-Plough's campaign contributions to other candidates.) Besides Schering-Plough, Ashcroft’s joint committee logged contributions from AT&T ($25,000) and Microsoft ($10,000). Microsoft, of course, is hoping the new attorney general drops the justice department’s antitrust suit against the company."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3308.htm

John Ashcroft. Bush's choice for Attorney General, this former senator from Missouri (defeated last November by a dead man) drew heat from Democrats, who argued that he will be a tool of the gun lobby, anti-choice forces, Christian extremists, and so forth. However, for obvious reasons, the Democrats chose not to assail Ashcroft for being a proven tool of big business.

For example, he sponsored an infamous bit of special-interest trash last year that would extend the patent on the super-profitable allergy pill Claritin, marketed by drug giant Schering-Plough. He then pocketed a $50,000 campaign donation from -- you guessed it -- Schering-Plough. The bill has yet to pass, but Schering's lobbyists are poised to ram it through Congress, a move that will ultimately cost consumers $9.6 billion more than if a generic version of the drug was available. Ashcroft has a long record of fund-raising from business interests with important matters before the Justice Department. One of those powerful interests is the pollution lobby, from which the senator took more than $1.7 million for his re-election bid, including such grateful donors as BP Amoco, DuPont, Exxon, Monsanto, Occidental Petroleum, Union Carbide, and Weyerhaeuser. They were grateful because the senator had opposed funding for environmental enforcement, voting for a roll-back of clean-water protections, and even voting to let mining companies dump cyanide and other wastes on public lands.

http://www.alternet.org/story/10442

[mom cat]

1. Spitzer is on the way.....Buy stock in dry cleaners..(the enviornmentally

good ones). Do you happen to have the info on the bill?