U.S. GOVERNMENT JOINS SUIT AGAINST ROXANE LABS

The U.S. government has gotten involved in a whistleblower suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Boehringer Ingelheim's generic subsidiary Roxane Laboratories alleging that Roxane violated the False Claims Act, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.

In its complaint, the government alleges that Roxane engaged in a scheme to report fraudulent and inflated prices for several pharmaceutical products, knowing that federal healthcare programs established reimbursement rates based on those reported prices.

The complaint alleges that the drugmaker reported prices that, in some instances, were more than 1,000 percent the actual sales prices on certain drugs. The government alleges that Medicare and Medicaid have reimbursed Roxane's customers in excess of $500 million for the generic drugs that are the subject of the complaint.

The DOJ investigation began after a home-based care company filed a False Claims Act suit. The act allows for private parties to file whistleblower suits to provide the government information about wrongdoing. If it is established that a party has submitted or caused others to submit false or fraudulent claims, the government can recover triple damages and $5,500 to $11,000 for each false or fraudulent claim filed.