A $2.75 million settlement has been reached with Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation over allegations that the company published false and inflated average wholesale prices for its drugs.
This settlement is the latest in a number of settlements in AWP lawsuits filed by the Office of the Attorney General in Frankfort Kentucky against 47 pharmaceutical manufacturers. The Kentucky Medicaid program relied on published average wholesale prices to calculate Medicaid drug reimbursement rates.
The lawsuits allege that Novartis and the other defendants published false, inflated and deceptive average wholesale prices for their drugs that bore no relationship to the real prices that Novartis was actually charging its customers.
Novartis Pharmaceuticals is a U.S. subsidiary of global pharmaceutical giant Novartis International AG headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Novartis AG is the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world. It also owns Sandoz, a large manufacturer of generic drugs. Among the many drug products that Novartis manufactures are Clozaril (schizophrenia), Diovan (hypertension), Exelon (Alzheimer's disease), Lotrel (cholesterol), Ritalin (AD/HD) and Tegretol and Trileptal (epilepsy).
