28 July 2022. On the eve of a trial with a former employee turned whistleblower, biotechnology company Biogen agreed to pay $900 million to settle allegations of lavishly overpaying doctors to prescribe their drugs to Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients. The whistleblower was a sales representative for the biotechnology company who claimed he was demoted when he blew the whistle on the sham speaker program. He will be entitled to 25-30 percent of the $900 million settlement, or at least $225 million.

The allegations are twofold: Biogen paid kickbacks to doctors via speaking programs to allegedly induce them to prescribe Biogen’s MS drugs, which in turn made any MS prescription subsequently submitted to a government health program a false claim for reimbursement. In order to induce physicians to continue to prescribe one of its older MS drugs, increase the market share of a newer drug, and boost sales of its latest drug, Biogen’s alleged kickback scheme centered around healthcare provider speaking programs. The biotech company allegedly paid healthcare providers extremely high honoraria and wined and dined them in exotic locations as part of their speaker training and consulting programs, at which expert providers were supposedly educating less expert providers about MS treatments. According to the relator’s trial brief, the sales department at Biogen failed to keep track of any feedback they received from their customers from these meetings, in violation of the company’s...

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