Texas sues Eli Lilly & Co. for bribing providers to prescribe medications

AUSTIN, Texas. (WISH) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. for bribing medical providers to prescribe drugs like Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Paxton claims that Lilly was responsible for an “illegal kickback scheme” where the company provided free nurses and reimbursement services for prescribing GLP-1 medications, used for weight loss and diabetes management, and other injectable drugs.

The lawsuit says that Lilly’s first scheme, the free nursing services, would influence providers by providing free nursing staff for services that doctors’ offices either could not afford to do or did not have the proper staffing to do.

Long-term patient care handles “everything from appointment and prescription refill requests, to concerns from sick patients, to billing issues. But insurance carriers don’t pay doctors for any of those phone calls … Now, more offices and hospitals are looking for ways to take fewer patients’ calls,” the filing says. According to Texas, Lilly took advantage of this by touting a Free Nurse Program in product brochures which would handle patient care.

“The availability of the Free Nurse Program is a key part of Lilly’s strategy for certain Covered Drugs, and was particularly effective around the time when these products were launched and Lilly was attempting to persuade Providers to begin writing prescriptions for Lilly’s products,” the lawsuit says.

The second scheme, according to Texas, is a reimbursement plan to reduce providers’ administrative costs related to prescribing Lilly’s drugs. Lilly’s sales pitches for their drugs includes Support Services, where the company would assume responsibility for the forms and administrative costs that happen in-between the the time it takes a doctor to prescribe a medicine and the patient filling that prescription at a pharmacy–which could total up to 20 hours a week of work.

The lawsuit claims that Lilly was aware that both of their programs create incentives for doctors to prescribe their drugs. By doing so, Texas claims that millions of dollars in Medicaid claims “were tainted by Lilly’s illegal marketing and quid pro quo arrangements, in violation of Texas Medicaid policy.”

In the Tuesday announcement of the lawsuit, Paxton said, “Eli Lilly fraudulently sought to maximize profits at taxpayer expense and put corporate greed over people’s health. I will not stand by while corporations unlawfully manipulate our healthcare system to line their own pockets.” 

Full lawsuit

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