Amgen to pay R.I., 35 other states in drug-pricing case

PROVIDENCE – Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin announced last week that as part of a nationwide settlement against the drug manufacturer Amgen Inc., the state will receive $54,248.
The settlement resolves allegations that the company violated certain state false-claims acts, by reporting inflated pricing data for its prescription drugs Aransep, Enbrel, Epogen, Neulats, Neupogen, and Sensipar, causing Rhode Island’s and other states’ Medicaid programs to overpay for those drugs.
Amgen has a production facility in West Greenwich.
According to Kilmartin, the drug-pricing data at issue in this settlement concerns the average wholesale price and wholesale acquisition cost benchmarks used by states’ Medicaid programs to set pharmacy reimbursement rates for pharmaceuticals dispensed to Medicaid beneficiaries. Rhode Island and 35 other states alleged that Amgen inflated that pricing data, creating an artificially inflated “spread” between the price for which Medicaid providers dispensed the named drugs to beneficiaries and the price at which the states reimbursed providers.
The states said that after creating the inflated spread, Amgen marketed that spread to Medicaid providers in order to boost Amgen’s sales of the named drugs.
“Despite settlement after settlement, we continue to see pharmaceutical companies engage in practices that boost their bottom line at the expense of states’ Medicaid programs,” said Kilmartin. •

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