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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah will receive a $190,000 share of a nationwide settlement with a major drug manufacturer.
The federal government settled with EMD Serono, the manufacturer of a drug used to treat multiple sclerosis, for $44.3 million over charges the company defrauded the Medicaid program. Utah's share of the settlement is more than $190,000.
According to a statement from the Utah Attorney General's Office, between March 2002 through December 2009, EMD Serono paid health care professionals to give promotional speeches and attend speaker training and consultant meetings as a way to persuade them and others to prescribe Rebif, a drug used to reduce the number of flareups and slow down the development of physical disability associated with MS.
“Paying a doctor to prescribe a drug is an illegal kickback,” says Robert Steed, director of the Utah Medicaid Fraud Control Unit with the attorney general’s office. “Pharmaceutical companies often cloak the payoffs in education grants and speaking engagements but they are trying to make doctors to make medical decisions based on which companies give them money.”
Under the settlement, Medicaid programs nationwide will receive about $19 million of the total settlement. Medicaid is funded jointly by federal and state governments.
The investigation was initiated by a lawsuit filed in Maryland under the the Federal False Claims Act.
