After years of controversy, Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) agreed to pay $925,000 to the state of Mississippi to settle allegations of conspiring to set prices of generic medicines, the first instance in which a state and drug maker have reached a deal over sweeping price-fixing litigation. Several current and former executives also reached a settlement, according to a court document.
In 2019, Mississippi was one of 43 states that accused more than a dozen generic drug makers and some of their executives of participating in a long-running conspiracy that, ultimately, raised prices for an untold number of Americans. The lawsuit was actually an expanded version of litigation filed in 2016 and the alleged conspiracies were also the focus of a third lawsuit filed last year.
The litigation alleged that, for many years, the generic drug makers had operated under an agreement not to compete with each other and to settle instead for what these companies referred to as a “fair share” of the market to avoid pushing prices down through competition. In some instance, the coordinated price hikes were more than 1,000%.
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