Drug Firm to Pay Feds $280 Million to Settle Pricing Claims

"By offering customers one price and then falsely reporting inflated prices to the lists the government uses when calculating how much to pay for the drugs, pharmaceutical companies created an incentive for the purchase of their drugs by allowing buyers to pocket the difference between the actual price of the drug and the inflated government payment," said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.

"Taxpayer-funded kickback schemes like this not only cost federal health care programs millions of dollars, they threaten to undermine the integrity of the choices health care providers make for their patient."

Justice offiicials say that the total amount of recoveries from False Claim Act lawsuits since January 2009 approach $6.8 billion.