December 3, 2013—The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has filed a third lawsuit—this time, against drug manufacturer AbbVie and its progenitor company Abbott—alleging it was overcharged for HIV/AIDS drugs subject to 340B drug discounts. Abbott and AbbVie became separate companies in January 2013.[ms-protect-content id=”2799″]
AHF sued the companies in California Superior Court on Nov. 27, saying it is owed more than $2 million plus interest for purchases between 2005 and 2013. The group filed similar suits in the same state court against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in September and against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and its Janssen Therapeutics and Janssen Biotech units in October.
In all three cases, AHF alleges it learned it had been overcharged through claims analysis and was forced to sue only after the companies refused to reclassify certain past sales as being 340B-eligible. The AIDS group alleges that GSK, the J&J companies, and the Abbott companies violated California’s unfair competition law. The complaints also allege breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment, and breaches of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
“AbbVie extends discount pricing to all 340B entities, including AHF, for use with eligible patients,” said Dirk van Eeden, AbbVie senior director of public affairs. “We believe AHF’s claims result from AHF’s internal administrative errors during the time period in question and are without merit.”
An Abbott spokesperson referred all questions about the suit to AbbVie.
“The main purpose of this suit is to stop what AHF sees as a growing trend among manufacturers to impose increasingly unreasonable, arbitrary, and unlawful restrictions on a 340B safety-net provider’s ability to obtain the 340B pricing to which it is entitled by law when the provider discovers that its purchases, made at wholesale, were in fact eligible for 340B discount prices,” AHF attorney Laura Boudreau said.
“Given the profits that manufacturers like Abbott make on lifesaving AIDS drugs, the fact that they will not extend the legally required drug pricing discounts to a safety-net care provider like AHF is shameful,” said AHF President Michael Weinstein.[/ms-protect-content]