Articles Tagged with pharmacy Medicare fraud law firm

andres-de-armas-103880-copy-300x200On July 24, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced that Celgene Corp., a pharmaceutical manufacturer headquartered in New Jersey, will pay $280 million to numerous states and the federal government to settle claims that it submitted false claims to the federal government and state health programs. From the settlement, $259.3 million will go to the federal government, $20.7 million will be divided among 28 states and the District of Columbia. California is set to receive more than any other state at $4.7 million.

U.S. ex rel. Brown v. Celgene Corp.

The settlement is the result of a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Beverly Brown under the qui tam provision of the False Claims Act. Brown, who was a sales manager at Celgene, brought a lawsuit on behalf of the federal and state governments. She provided evidence that Celgene promoted two cancer drugs, Thalomid and Revlimid, for uses that were not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and therefore not covered by federal healthcare programs.

Few things are more important that health.  We all worry about it, especially when we think about our senior years.  In addition to worrying about our physical and mental well-being, many of us are plagued by questions like “Will I be able to afford the health care that I need?”  Medicare and Medicaid exist to ease these concerns, but they are struggling.  As an experienced health care fraud law firm, we know that fraud is a big part of the problem.  Nursing home fraud and other forms of Medicare/Medicaid fraud deplete already limited resources and impede the quality of care as (so-called) professionals place profit over people’s health.  Scammers target lucrative arenas so it is no surprise that our firm is seeing repeated cases of Medicaid and Medicare fraud involving nursing home pharmacy providers.

Tentative Settlement in Case Alleging Pharmacy Accepted Kickbacks in Exchange for Promoting Drug

According to Modern Healthcare, Omnicare, the country’s largest provider of pharmacy services for long-term care facilities, reached a tentative agreement with the federal government to settle accusations it accepted millions of pharmacydollars in illegal kickbacks from Abbott Laboratories.  According to the government, Abbott paid kickbacks in exchange for Omnicare promoting the drug Depakote as treatment for behavioral disturbances in dementia patients.  The FDA has not approved Depakote for that purpose.  Nonetheless, Omnicare purportedly promoted the off-label use and had its pharmacists review patient charts and recommend the drug to doctors.  In return, Abbott allegedly paid kickbacks in a range of different disguises from “educational funding” and grants to tickets to sporting events and money used to fund corporate meetings.

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