A U.S. district judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit against Mylan Inc., the marketer of the EpiPen auto-injector, and a group of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) can proceed. Mylan, now part of Viatris Inc., and the PBMs lost in a bid to have the Minnesota-based class action dismissed. The suit, brought by drug distributors, alleges that the Mylan and the PBMs conspired to engage in anticompetitive practices that drove up the price of EpiPens for mutual benefit. Mylan has faced pricing controversy since it surfaced that the list price for a set of two branded EpiPens rose rapidly to $600 in 2016, an increase of more than 500 percent from 2008 PBMs usually negotiate favorable prices for their insurer clients, but the lawsuit alleges that instead the defendant PBMs accepted large rebates – described as kickbacks – from Mylan. In return, the suit contends the PBMs gave highly preferential treatment to EpiPen versus new auto-injector competitors (Auvi-Q and the generic version of Adrenaclick), which were either kept off insurer formulary lists or put in less favorable formulary tiers.
The PBMs and Mylan each argued separately that they did nothing outside of normal commercial business, and that the plaintiffs failed to make the case that they had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) or, in Mylan’s case, also the Sherman Act. (The latter relates to unlawful behavior to maintain a monopoly.) However, U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud in Minnesota ruled that the “plaintiffs have stated plausible claims under RICO and the Sherman Act.” While Mylan and the PBMs contended they were pursuing their own “divergent goals” as businesses, Tostrud found that “the Complaint contains a fairly clear description of why Mylan and the PBM Defendants all had interests in keeping EpiPen prices inflated.” Mylan argued as well that the plaintiffs’ claims exceeded a four-year statute of limitations, but Tostrud said dismissal on that basis would be “inappropriate” at this stage of legal proceedings
Submitted January 23, 2021 at 11:30PM by MountainsMan55 https://ift.tt/3qMjOaR
