Yep, the boys at GSK -- GlaxoSmithKline -- just paid some serious sheckels --$87 Million -- to settle some serious fraud claims in connection with bogus medicare payments.
According to Supervising Deputy Attorney John Krayniak, Office of Insurance Fraud Prosecutor's Medicaid Fraud Section, Glaxo avoided higher rebate payments by re-labeling or re-packaging certain drugs under private HMO labels. For example, under a private labeling agreement with California-based HMO Kaiser Permanente, Glaxo manufactured, packed and shipped Flonase to Kaiser, substituting Kaiser's identification number for the Glaxo identification number. The result of the private labeling arrangement was to allow Kaiser additional price discounts on Flonase without having to report the discounted price as Glaxo's "best price," thus allowing Glaxo to avoid paying higher rebates to the state Medicaid programs.
Now, no sane person can figger out most of this jive. And, truth be told, $87 Mill ain't a whole lotta money for a billion dollar behemoth. Of course, who gives a flying crap about Flonase -- y'all should be looking into AZT!
But, of course, fraud is fraud -- and we're always delighted to expose some of these rascals!
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