December 6, 2018

Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc., will pay $360 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by means of illegally using a foundation as a channel through which it paid the copays of thousands of Medicare patients who were taking Actelion’s pulmonary arterial hypertension drugs to induce patients to purchase the medications. Actelion collected data from the foundation on its spending for patients and used this information to calculate its donations to the foundation, ensuring that its contributions were adequate to cover the copays of patients taking the subject drugs. The company continued these practices despite allegedly receiving warnings from the foundation.   DOJ

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Drug and DME Pricing, FCA Federal, Pharma Fraud,