NY Attorney General confirms real-life conspiracy among drug companies
(NaturalNews) The office of the New York Attorney General and the
American units of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and Teva Pharmaceutical
Industries Ltd. have come to terms on a settlement involving claims that
an agreement between the two Big Pharma companies restricted
competition unlawfully.
Both companies agreed to pay a small fine
(by comparison) of $150,000 to New York State and to cease making
similar agreements in the future as part of the settlement, Reuters reported. Neither company admitted or denied the allegations, but the settlement absolves them of having to do so.
By
settling, the companies have ended an investigation that was being
conducted by the state into an agreement that was signed by both in 2010
to sell a generic version of Pfizer, Inc.'s cholesterol-lowering drug
Lipitor in the U.S., while not horning in on the exclusivity rights of
other generic drugs sold by the pharmaceutical companies. Per Reuters:
The
agreement was drawn up as a contingency plan to allow Israel's Teva to
sell the generic Lipitor, or atorvastatin calcium, in case Ranbaxy's
version was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before
Lipitor lost its patent protection on November 30, 2011.
While
India's Ranbaxy, majority-owned by Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd,
eventually got FDA approval in time, the agreement remained in place and
could have been used to protect other drugs made by the two companies.
'Pay-for-delay'
"Agreements between drug
manufacturers to protect each other's market positions violate
fundamental principles of antitrust law, and can lead to higher drug
prices," Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.
While the agreement
related only to the sale of the one drug, it included a "no-challenge"
clause, which allowed both companies to shield from competition, as well
as legal and regulatory challenges, scores of other medications,
according to the NY attorney general's office, which added, however,
that no anti-competitive effects due to the agreement had been
identified during the investigation.
Schneiderman says the entire
ordeal represents the application of a recent legal precedent that
arose from challenges of "pay-for-delay" agreements that were
established between makers of brand-name and generic drugs.
Those
deals, where a brand-name Pharma company pays a generic rival not to
sell their versions of a drug at a much-reduced price, have caught the
attention of regulators in countries all over the world, because such
agreements raise patient-care costs as well as the public sector's costs
to cover healthcare treatments.
Criminal enterprise
"Ranbaxy...
continues to believe that the agreement was pro-competitive and an
important part of making the product readily available to patients and
the U.S. healthcare system in a timely fashion," a Ranbaxy spokesman
said in an email to Reuters, but the other company involved, Teva, would not comment.
"The
settlement is positive for (Ranbaxy). The settlement amount will not
significantly impact the company," said Sarabjit Kour Nangra, an analyst
at Angel Broking, as quoted by the newswire service.
Ranbaxy was
banned from exporting drugs to the U.S. after failing to abide by U.S.
Food and Drug Administration manufacturing standards.
Natural News
has reported on illegal activity committed by Big Pharma companies
often in the past. As our editor, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has
documented, anyone who has labeled the industry as little more than a
criminal enterprise has been vindicated time and again. In 2012, Mike
wrote:
Drug and vaccine manufacturer Merck was caught
red-handed by two of its own scientists faking vaccine efficacy data by
spiking blood samples with animal antibodies. GlaxoSmithKline has just
been fined a whopping $3 billion for bribing doctors, lying to the FDA,
hiding clinical trial data and fraudulent marketing. Pfizer, meanwhile
has been sued by the nation's pharmacy retailers for what is alleged as
an "overarching anticompetitive scheme" to keep generic cholesterol
drugs off the market and thereby boost its own profits.
This latest settlement with authorities in New York further documents the previous pattern of criminality.
Sources:
http://www.reuters.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
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