Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has recovered $25.2 million from five pharmaceutical companies that were sued for alleged unlawful inflation of drug costs paid by Louisiana taxpayers through the Medicaid program. The companies — Actavis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Dey, GlaxoSmithKline, and Schering-Plough — will pay Louisiana a combined total of $25.2 million for misreporting drug price information in order to improperly increase reimbursements paid by Louisiana’s Medicaid program. The claims involved Medicaid reimbursements based on average wholesale prices.

Attorney General Caldwell has aggressively pursued the recovery of taxpayer funded Medicaid program dollars. Over the last four years, the Louisiana AG’s office has recovered a total of $138 million for the Medicaid Program. These five most recent recoveries come as a result of the 2010 lawsuit against 109 drug manufacturers. The suit accused the Defendants of committing fraud and violating the Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act and Louisiana’s Medical Assistance Programs Integrity Law. Hopefully, several of the more than one hundred remaining Defendants will go to trial in the 19th Judicial District Court later this year. Attorney General Caldwell had this to say about the litigation:

These settlement funds are just the tip of the iceberg. We will continue to fight to recover our taxpayer dollars until every cent is accounted for.

The Attorney General’s office has done an outstanding job of standing up for Louisiana citizens and protecting them. I am reasonably sure there will be more good news to report very soon.