Keller Rohrback L.L.P. Takes On Drug Companies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers for driving up the cost of Diabetes Drugs and Products
Following its filing of a class action challenging soaring insulin prices, Keller Rohrback L.L.P. has filed three more lawsuits against some of the largest drug manufacturers and the three largest pharmacy benefit management companies (“PBMs”). The cases seek to make the care and treatment for Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Patients more affordable and increase pricing transparency in the pharmaceutical industry.
The three largest U.S. pharmacy benefit managers—CVS Health Corp. (a/k/a Caremark), Express Scripts, and OptumRx—and the six leading pharmaceutical companies in the diabetes care industry—Roche, Bayer, Abbott, Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly and Co., and Novo Nordisk—are accused of colluding to inflate prices for the products they make, including blood glucose test strips and emergency glucagon treatment kits.
The four cases filed by Keller Rohrback have sparked much interest and debate in the role that PBMs are playing in the rise of drug prices today.
“Today the firms [PBMs] extract billions of dollars in price concessions from drug companies eager to remain in their good graces. The drugmakers’ goal is to secure spots on the PBMs’ formularies, the rosters of approved drugs the PBMs maintain for their health plan clients. To do so, the drugmakers offer PBMs rebates for each prescription filled and agree to a dizzying list of other fees. The PBMs say that since most of those rebates and fees are passed on to health plans and subsequently to patients, they fulfill their promise to reduce drug costs all along the line. But no one can be sure that’s really happening, because the size of the rebates and the degree to which they’re passed along is guarded by the PBMs as trade secrets. Each PBM contract for each health plan, moreover, is concealed from other health plans.”
If you pay a high copay, high coinsurance or the full cost of diabetes-related prescriptions, you may be paying artificially inflated and anti-competitive prices. Please contact an attorney to learn more about whether you too have been subject to unlawful pricing. Call 800.776.6044 or email consumer@kellerrohrback.com.
Read more about our Insulin Overpricing case.