PORTLAND, Maine — Maine is in line to recover $7.7 million from a national settlement with drugmaker Wyeth and its parent company, Pfizer, over allegations that the company did not properly calculate drug discounts to state Medicaid programs.
Maine Attorney General Janet Mills said in a release Tuesday that a proposed settlement between the companies, the U.S. government and 35 states will deliver another $14.9 million to the federal government on behalf of Maine.
The federal and state governments alleged that Wyeth did not properly discount its oral and intravenous drug Protonix, most commonly used to treat acid reflux disease, which can damage the esophagus.
The governments claimed Wyeth violated rules of the Medicaid Prescription Drug Rebate Program enacted in 1990, which requires a company to deliver rebates to state Medicaid programs based on the lowest price at which a certain drug was sold in a given quarter.
From 2001-2006, a period before Pfizer acquired the Madison, New Jersey-based Wyeth, the governments alleged Wyeth sold oral and intravenous versions of its drug to hospitals as a bundle but did not treat sales as a bundle in calculating rebates due to Medicaid, causing those rebates to be understated.
The settlement comes from two whistleblower lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, according to Mills’ office.
In total, the settlement calls for Pfizer to pay $784.6 million, with $413 million of that going to individual states. It’s from that pool of money that $7.7 million will go to Maine coffers.
Mills credited the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit with playing “a key role in bringing this litigation to a successful end.”
“Maine and the federal government spend nearly $2.5 billion dollars in the MaineCare program every year,” Mills said in a news release. “It is critical that we ensure taxpayers are getting the full benefit of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, maximizing savings to the taxpayers.”