WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Drug maker Dey Inc. has agreed to pay $280 million for falsely reporting inflated drug prices for federal reimbursement programs, U.S. officials said Monday.
The U.S. Justice Department said Dey, a subsidiary of Mylan Inc., reported false prices for Albuterol Sulfate, Albuterol MDI, Cromolyn Sodium and Ipratropium Bromide, resulting in excessive payments on millions of claims paid by Medicare and Medicaid.
"With this settlement, the Department of Justice has now recovered over $2 billion dollars from pharmaceutical manufacturers arising from similar unlawful drug pricing schemes," Tony West, assistant attorney general for the civil division of the Department of Justice, said. "As the department alleged in its complaint against Dey, by offering customers one price and then falsely reporting inflated prices to the lists the government uses when calculating how much to pay for the drugs, pharmaceutical companies created an incentive for the purchase of their drugs by allowing buyers to pocket the difference between the actual price of the drug and the inflated government payment.
"Taxpayer-funded kickback schemes like this not only cost federal health care programs millions of dollars, they threaten to undermine the integrity of the choices health care providers make for their patients."
The settlement ends a whistle-blower action filed by Ven-A-Care of the Florida Keys Inc., which will receive about $67.2 million.
