Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont and the Vermont Health Plan filed suit this week against Teva Pharmaceuticals, accusing the company of using some shady tactics to rake in money from its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone.
Teva made $34 billion between 2002 and 2019 from Copaxone, according to the suit. One of the marketing tactics used involved allegedly offering consumers coupons to keep them from switching to a lower-priced generic version of the medication, according to the suit.
While consumers may have appreciated the coupons, payers such as Blue Cross had to pick up the significant difference between what a generic would cost and what Teva charged for Copaxone, the insurer said.
The lawsuit claims that Teva “preyed upon the fundamental disconnect between the entities that pay for prescription medications (employers and insurers who pay claims incurred by health plan members) and the individuals and entities that determine which products are ultimately purchased (doctors, pharmacists, benefit managers, and health plan members).”
Teva had not responded to a request for comment from Fierce Healthcare at the time of publication.
More than 900,000 people in the U.S. live with MS, which causes the body’s immune system to attack the central nervous system. About 85% of MS patients have relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and experience neurologic attacks, often followed by periods of remission during which some or all of the symptoms disappear.
Teva licensed glatiramer acetate in 1987 and began selling Copaxone in 1997 for $769.15 a month. The company raised the price to $1,000 by 2003. By 2017, it cost $5,832, according to the lawsuit.
“When Copaxone was nearing the end of its patent exclusivity, Teva launched a new 40mg, three-times-a-week formulation to avoid drug substitution laws,” the lawsuit states. “Teva, in collusion with pharmacy benefit managers, then resorted to anticompetitive, unfair, and deceptive tactics to coerce and otherwise induce patients and doctors to switch to the new dosage, over which Teva improperly claimed and for some time received extended patent exclusivity.”
Teva pressured doctors to write “dispense as written” prescriptions for Copaxone so that pharmacists couldn’t suggest a cheaper generic, according to the lawsuit.
“The end result was that generic forms of glatiramer acetate were unable to meaningfully compete with Copaxone and Teva was able to maintain and exploit its monopoly in the market for glatiramer acetate, including by charging supercompetitive prices,” the lawsuit states. “This caused health plan payers to unnecessarily expend billions of dollars on Copaxone. But for the anticompetitive conduct of Teva and its co-conspirators, health plan payers would have spent far less on glatiramer acetate, as they would have paid for either more affordably priced Copaxone or lower-cost generics.”