Federal investigators have kicked off a probe into whether certain services drugmakers offer to doctors and patients are nothing more than thinly veiled kickbacks aimed at increasing sales, a report on Friday reveals.
The services, which can include payments to patients to defray copay fees and disease education, have already sparked whistleblower lawsuits and a suit filed this week by a California regulator.
The US probe is focused on actions by Sanofi, Gilead Sciences and Biogen, according to the report.
Sanofi is cooperating with the probe, said to be undertaken by the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the investigation.
The existence of the individual probes into each company had been known for months as they were revealed in regulatory filings, but the Journal pieced together the probes and, with the recent California action, formulated a wider, more patterned investigative bent.
For example, Gilead revealed in February that it had received inquiries from state and federal investigators in Pennsylvania about its “reimbursement support offerings,” the Journal reported.
At Biogen, investigators in December 2016 sent the company demands for documents related to “entities providing clinical education and reimbursement support services,” according to the report.
The California lawsuit, against AbbVie, claimed the North Chicago, Illinois, pharma giant’s payments for nursing support and for insurance assistance were nothing more than kickbacks that encouraged doctors to write prescriptions for Humira, its arthritis drug.
Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner, told the Journal that the nurses deployed by AbbVie were trained to push Humira and to downplay its side effects.
“It’s of particular concern when decisions about medical care are being driven by kickbacks and inducements as opposed to what’s in the best interest of patients,” Jones told the Journal.
Whistleblower lawsuits alleging similar improper activities have been filed against Amgen, Bayer and Eli Lilly, according to the report.
Shares of Sanofi fell 1.2 percent Friday, to $43.61. Gilead shares rose almost 1 percent, to $75.51, and Biogen shares gained 1.2 percent, to $345.41.
