On August 18, 2023, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred a number of related cases to the District of New Jersey for coordinated pre-trial proceedings. On December 6, 2023, Keller Rohrback partner, David Ko, was appointed to the Executive Committee for the Self-Funded Payer Track of the litigation.
Keller Rohrback L.L.P. represents multiple government entities against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), CVS Health/Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx, and three of the major manufacturers of insulin: Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi-Aventis. The claims are based on the skyrocketing cost of insulin these government entities have incurred for employees and beneficiaries of their self-funded plans, costs which have risen more than tenfold over the past twenty years.
In particular, the PBMs—industry middlemen who negotiate drug prices and create drug “formularies” that determine which drugs are available to patients and how much they pay for them—conspired with the insulin manufacturers to artificially inflate the price of insulin for their own collective and financial benefit. The CDC reports that more than 11% of the U.S. population has diabetes, and insulin is essential for survival for many diabetics. Rather than making insulin affordable and consistent with the actual cost to manufacture these products, these defendants have taken advantage of this population, exploited the health care system, and intentionally increased costs for no other justification than to increase their profits.
If your city or county has purchased the well-known and widely prescribed analog insulins: Lantus, Apidra, Levemir, Humalog, or Novolog, produced by Sanofi-Aventis, Novo Nordisk, or Eli Lilly, you may be paying artificially inflated prices. Contact our attorneys to learn more about whether you too have been subject to unlawful pricing. Call (800) 776-6044 or email [email protected].
