Pharmaceutical drugs sales, qui tam lawsuits
  and the False Claims Act -- Part VI

Examples of qui tam settlements by pharmaceutical companies
In the largest Medicare fraud settlement, TAP Pharmaceuticals paid the government $875 million to settle criminal charges and two qui tam lawsuits. The government and whistleblowers alleged that TAP had paid illegal kickbacks to doctors to prescribe Lupron, its prostate-cancer drug.

Serono S.A. and its U.S. subsidiaries paid $704 million to the federal government and state Medicaid programs to settle several qui tam cases and related criminal charges. The government and whistleblowers charged that Serono paid kickbacks to doctors, submitted fraudulent claims for off-label use of Serostim and engaged in other illegal schemes to promote, market and sell Serostim, a drug used to treat weight loss in AIDS patients.

AstraZeneca PLC paid $355 million to the federal government and state Medicaid programs to settle a qui tam lawsuit and federal fraud charges. The government and whistleblower alleged that AstraZeneca had failed to give state Medicaid programs the best drug price for its drug for prostate cancer, Zoladex; gave doctors free Zoladex with the expectation that they would bill Medicare and patients for the drug; and paid other illegal remuneration, such as unrestricted “educational grants” to induce doctors to prescribe Zoladex.

Bayer AG paid the federal government more than $250 million, and GlaxoSmithKline paid $87.6 million for failing to give the Medicaid program the lowest price charged to any customer. Both companies offered discounts to Kaiser Permanente -- then the nation's largest health maintenance organization -- for their drugs but didn’t report the low prices given to Kaiser, the government said, to avoid paying millions of dollars in rebates to Medicaid.

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