FDAnews Drug Daily Bulletin

Healthcare services and IT giant McKesson faces a lawsuit that says it manipulated the average wholesale price (AWP) of more than 400 drugs thereby forcing consumers and health insurance plans “to make hundreds of millions of dollars of excess payments.”

The suit alleges that McKesson and First DataBank “reached a secret agreement” in late 2001 to increase the “spread” from 20 percent to 25 percent between the published wholesale acquisition cost and the AWP of a range of drugs to grow their profits illicitly. First DataBank says it is a provider of integrated databases of information about medications.

The lawsuit, San Francisco Health Plan and The People of the State of California v. McKesson Corporation, is related to a class action filed in the same court — the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts — in 2005, which explicitly excluded such government entities as the San Francisco Health Plan. First DataBank settled that lawsuit in October 2006 and is identified as an unnamed co-conspirator in the San Francisco complaint.

The new lawsuit, filed in the Massachusetts U.S. District Court by the San Francisco Health Plan through San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, seeks to certify “government entities in the state of California for the period of Aug. 1, 2001, to the present” as a class.

A press release from Herrera’s office identified sanofi-aventis’ allergy drug Allegra (fexofenadine HCl), Pfizer’s arthritis medicine Celebrex (celecoxib) and cholesterol drug Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) and AstraZeneca’s heartburn drug Nexium (esomeprazole magnesium) and diazepam, sold by Roche under the brand name Valium, as examples of allegedly overpriced drugs. The lawsuit also mentions Schering-Plough’s allergy drug Clarinex (desloratadine), charging that McKesson told one of its pharmacy clients that raising the AWP on this drug meant that “‘fat cat status is just around the corner.’”

In addition to unspecified damages, the complaint seeks civil penalties, restitution and attorneys’ fees and costs. It charges McKesson violated the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Cartwright Act, California False Claims Act and California Unfair Competition Law. The Cartwright Act essentially is an antitrust law.