Attorney General Jack Conway today announced a $2 million settlement with Deerfield, Ill., pharmaceutical manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corporation, a subsidiary of global healthcare company Baxter International, Inc. Baxter is one of the largest manufacturers in the world of intravenous solutions and products used in the delivery of fluids and drugs to patients.
The Kentucky Medicaid program relies on published average wholesale prices (AWPs) to calculate Medicaid drug-reimbursement rates. Baxter published significantly inflated AWPs for its intravenous solutions that bore no relationship to any prices that Baxter actually charged its customers. This created an artificial "spread" between Baxter’s published prices and the real prices. At times this "spread" exceeded 1,300 percent, which caused the Kentucky Medicaid program to pay substantially more for Baxter’s drugs than the actual cost of the drugs.
"Taxpayers are footing the bill for these inflated drug prices, and my office is seeking to recover the money the Medicaid program lost as a result of this deception and overpayment," said General Conway. "All of this could have been easily avoided if Baxter and the other defendants would have done what the law requires - report truthful prices."
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