A health insurance company based in Texas is suing Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) saying that the drug company marketed three of its top-selling drugs and has illegally encouraged doctors to prescribe them for non-approved uses. The insurance company has also accused Pfizer of paying kickbacks to doctors who prescribe the drugs.
Health Care Service Corp., which operates Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and covers 12.4 million people across four states, filed suit against Pfizer on June 4th in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Pfizer has settled similar lawsuits and agreed in September to pay $2.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties related to its promotion of Bextra, Lyrica, Geodon and other drugs.
Health Care Service Corp., said that it became aware of Pfizer’s actions as a result of that settlement and claims that the New York-based drug manufacturer gave Texan doctors misleading information about the effectiveness and safety of the anti-inflammatory prescription drug Bextra, the anti-psychotic Geodon and the nerve pain and epilepsy treatment Lyrica.
The insurer claimed that Pfizer encouraged doctors to use drugs for conditions that they had not been approved to treat, a practice known as prescribing off-label. This practice is legal, however drug companies cannot promote drugs to be treat illnesses which they are not listed on their federally approved labels. The suit also claimed that Pfizer has paid kickbacks to the doctors which have prescribed drugs off label.
Pfizer spokesperson Chris Loder said his company denies all the allegations.”This is a case of an insurance company seeking its money back for medicines that physicians prescribed appropriately using their best medical judgments,” he said.
