Forest agrees to pay $38 million to settle kickback allegations
Forest Laboratories and Forest Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $38 million to the federal government and several states to settle allegations regarding sales and marketing practices involving three medications.
The federal government will receive $35.5 million and state Medicaid programs will receive $2.5 million, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release.
The DOJ said the resolved claims were allegations only and that the government had not made any determination of liability.
The government investigated Forest for violating the Anti-Kickback Statute from 2008 through 2011 for the following three drugs: Bystolic (nebivolol) to treat high blood pressure, Savella (milnacipran) to treat fibromyalgia and Namenda (memantine) to treat dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Nebivolol is an oral medication that the FDA approved in 2007 to lower blood pressure in patients with hypertension.
During that time period, Forest allegedly provided payments and meals to physicians for speaking programs even when the programs were cancelled, when no licensed healthcare professionals attended the programs, when the same attendees attended multiple programs during a short time period and when meals exceeded the company’s cost limitations.
“Quality and patient safety must be the driving factors in the medical decision making process,” Lamont Pugh III, the special agent in charge, said in a news release. “Attempting to sway physicians to deviate from those core values with illegal inducements, as alleged in this lawsuit, debilitates their unbiased medical judgment at the expense of patients and taxpayers.”
Former Forest employee Kurt Kroening brought the allegations to light by filing a whistleblower lawsuit. He will receive approximately $7.8 million, according to the release.
Forest Laboratories and Forest Pharmaceuticals are indirect subsidiaries of Allergan. Allergan completed its acquisition of Forest for approximately $28 billion in July 2014, which was after these allegations occurred.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.