Eli Lilly headquarters located in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly bribed Texas health care providers to prescribe its most profitable drugs, state Attorney General Ken Paxton alleged in a lawsuit filed this week.
“Big Pharma compromised medical decision making by engaging in an illegal kickback scheme,” he said. “Eli Lilly fraudulently sought to maximize profits at taxpayer expense and put corporate greed over people’s health. I will not stand by while corporations unlawfully manipulate our health care system to line their own pockets.”
The company manufactures the popular GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound for diabetes management and weight loss, among other medications. Other pharmaceuticals cited in the lawsuit include Alimta, Basaglar, Ebglyss, Emgality, Forteo, Humalog, Humulin, Jaypirca, Retevmo, Rezvoglar, Taltz and Verzenio,.
The company offered illegal incentives to medical providers in Texas, including “free nurses” and reimbursement support services, the lawsuit alleges. These inducements were designed to steer providers toward prescribing Eli Lilly’s drugs.
“In many cases, these prescriptions were covered by Medicaid, resulting in millions of dollars in claims to Texas Medicaid that were tainted by Eli Lilly’s illegal marketing and quid pro quo arrangements, in violation of the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act,” according to a news release from Paxton’s office.
Eli Lilly said the company denies the allegations and plans to defend against them in court.
“Multiple courts and the federal government have rejected claims by this same corporate relator against Lilly as meritless," a company spokesperson said in a statement to the Indy Star. ."In fact, the United States government determined that `the relator’s allegations lack sufficient factual and legal support' in a prior case, explaining that 'federal health care programs have a strong interest in ensuring that, after a physician has appropriately prescribed a medication, patients have access to basic product support relating to their medication.' We intend to vigorously defend against these allegations.”
Eli Lilly has been the target of several legal actions over the past year. Last October, Paxton sued the company and other major insulin manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers -- including Express Scripts, CVS Pharmacy and others -- over an alleged conspiracy to increase insulin prices.
More recently, a federal appeals court revived a proposed class action lawsuit accusing Eli Lilly and four other major drugmakers of conspiring to restrict a government-mandated drug discount program, which allegedly drove up costs for safety-net hospitals and clinics serving low-income patients. According to the plaintiffs, the firms lobbied the federal government, sometimes through shared lobbying firms and industry groups, to curb the program’s scope for diabetes medications. When those efforts failed, they each announced similar discount limits within months of each other.
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