Johnson & Johnson has sued divisions of health insurer Cigna, accusing them of working with a drug-benefit middleman to drain J&J financial-assistance funds earmarked for patients taking some of its pricier drugs. The move by J&J widens litigation the healthcare giant initiated in 2022 against a middleman, SaveOnSP LLC, and is a new flare-up of long-running tension over drug prices among manufacturers, insurers, pharmacy-benefit managers and other middlemen in recent years. J&J added Express Scripts, which is a PBM, and specialty pharmacy Accredo—both units of Cigna—as defendants in an amended lawsuit that J&J filed under seal in federal court in New Jersey earlier this year. The amended lawsuit was unsealed in late November. The pharmaceutical company claims that the Cigna units worked on a program with SaveOn that caused J&J to pay more than $100 million in drug copay assistance than it would have otherwise. J&J is seeking monetary damages in an amount to be determined at trial, and a court order that the companies stop the program.
