The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer will pay nearly $60 million to resolve charges that a company it acquired paid kickbacks so that physicians would prescribe a specific migraine drug to patients, thereby defrauding Medicare and other federal health care programs.
The Justice Department announced Friday that Biohaven paid improper remuneration, including in the form of speaker honoraria and meals at high-end restaurants, to healthcare professionals to induce them to prescribe the migraine medication Nurtec ODTmore often in violation of the anti-kickback statute.
The scheme took place from March 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2022. Pfizer bought Biohaven in October 2022.
Prosecutors said that certain prescribers who attended multiple speaker programs on the same topic received no educational benefit from attending repeat programs and that certain Biohaven speaker programs were attended by individuals with no educational need to attend, such as the speakersβ spouses, family members, or friends, or colleagues from the speakersβ own medical practice.
Pfizer ended the Nurtec speaker programs after paying $11.5 billion to buy Biohaven.
Pfizer to pay $60 million to settle claims that its Biohaven unit paid kickbacks to doctors.. https://t.co/U1jb0yeXuZ #pharma #kickbacks #fraud #doctors #speakers $PFE
— pharmalot (@pharmalot) January 24, 2025
Purdue and The Sackler family agree $7.4bn opioid settlement. And Pfizer is doing the same…
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family who controlled it have agreed to pay up to $7.4bn (Β£6bn) to settle claims regarding its powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin.
The deal represents an increase of more than $1bn on a previous settlement that was rejected in 2024 by the US Supreme Court, according to news agencies AP and Reuters.
The Sacklers bankruptcy signed at the court filing on July 7, 2021
