A federal judge in Illinois ordered Indianapolis-based pharmaceuticals giant Eli Lilly and Co. to pay $183.7 million in damages to state and local governments after a whistleblower complaint.
Lilly plans to appeal the decision.
Ronald J. Streck, the whistleblower, brought the lawsuit eight years ago, alleging the company, along with others, misreported prices and made false claims about the Medicaid rebate program. Streck alleged that Lilly misreported price data to Medicaid and underpaid rebates in violation of the federal False Claims Act and various related state acts.
A jury determined the actual damages to be over $61 million, but the federal False Claims Act requires that the company is liable for three times the actual damages, in addition to accounting for inflation. The federal judge ruled recently that Lilly was liable for those tripled damages.
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The case, first filed in November 2014, alleged that Lilly, along with other defendants, underreported its average manufacturer prices in order to underpay rebates to Medicaid. In so doing, Streck alleged, state and federal governments lost millions of dollars.
Because the higher the average manufacturer price is, the higher the rebate that the company owes to Medicaid, underreporting drug prices would mean that the company would be required to pay the government less. A judge ruled that Lilly's price calculations were "factually...
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