The United States filed a second false claims action against Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. alleging that they paid kickbacks to doctors to induce them to prescribe Novartis pharmaceutical products that were reimbursed by federal health care programs, the Justice Department announced last week.
The government alleges that from January 2001 through November 2011, Novartis systematically violated the Anti-Kickback Statute, which prohibits payment of remuneration to induce referrals of items or services covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and other federally funded programs. Novartis allegedly violated its own internal policies concerning speaker programs, which require that the programs have an educational purpose and that slides about the company’s drugs be presented. Novartis allegedly violated the Anti-Kickback Statute by paying doctors to speak about certain drugs, including its hypertension drugs Lotrel and Valturna and its diabetes drug Starlix, at events that were often little or nothing more than social occasions for the doctors. The payments and lavish dinners given to the doctors were, in reality, kickbacks to the speakers and attendees to induce them to write prescriptions for Novartis drugs. In many instances Novartis made payments to doctors for purported speaker programs that either did not occur at all or that had few or no attendees, and thousands of programs were held all over the country at which few or no slides were shown and the doctors who participated spent little or no time discussing the drug at issue.
The government claims that Novartis was well aware that its speaker programs created opportunities to provide kickbacks to doctors. In September 2010, Novartis entered into a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle False Claims Act lawsuits based in part on violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute due to illegal remuneration paid to doctors through such mechanisms as speaker programs, and signed a corporate integrity agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General agreeing to implement a rigorous compliance program. Nonetheless, even after entering into the corporate integrity agreement, Novartis’s compliance program allegedly failed to prevent kickbacks from being paid in conjunction with Novartis’s speaker programs.
As a consequence of its alleged violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute, Novartis has caused the submission of numerous false claims for drugs to federal health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE and the Department of Veterans Affairs health care program, resulting in millions of dollars in reimbursements. Novartis’s unlawful conduct caused those false claims to be made to and paid by the federal health care programs.
The lawsuit was originally brought by former Novartis sales representative Oswald Bilotta under the whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act allows private citizens with knowledge of fraud to sue on behalf of the government and share in the recovery. The U.S. seeks treble damages and penalties under the False Claims Act as well as damages under the common law.
The Chanler Group, in association with the Hirst Law Group, represents whistleblowers who take action under the False Claims Act to report fraud committed against the federal and state governments. We have years of experience representing whistleblower clients who expose every kind of fraud against the government, including health care fraud, contract fraud, and tax fraud. Read more about our expertise in False Claims Act cases and how you can take action.
