Insurance Company Files Large RICO Class Action Targeting Low-Testosterone Therapies: Claims Manufacturers Invented “Low-T” and Duped Payors Into Paying Billions

Insurer Medical Mutual of Ohio has sued Abbvie, Abbott Laboratories, Solvay, Eli Lilly, Auxilium, Actavis, and a host of subsidiaries over each company’s respective “low testosterone” disease awareness activities and promotion of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) drugs. “These TRT drugs were marketed as part of a decade-long deceptive marketing scheme to transform the male aging process into a curable disease state,” argues the complaint. Medical Mutual of Ohio brought the case on behalf of any payors who paid all or a portion of the cost of AndroGel, Testim, Testopel, Axiron, Androderm, and Fortesta Gel—TRT products marketed by the defendants. The complaint (available here) brings many of its claims under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), accusing the drug companies of forming unlawful TRT drug marketing “enterprises”: Beginning approximately in 2000 and continuing to the present, each Defendant implemented a marketing, advertising and promotion campaign by combining its own respective significant personnel and financial resources with a discreet and identifiable number of medical marketing firms and peer-influencing physicians through which Defendants (i) falsely and deceptively oversold the efficacy of the TRT drugs, (ii) failed to adequately warn of, and affirmatively misled the medical community regarding the severe side effects of the TRT drugs, and (iii) unlawfully promoted the TRT drugs for usage in populations ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs