{"id":102827,"date":"2026-08-13T14:54:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/102827\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T14:54:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:54:49","slug":"astrazeneca-settles-texas-kickback-lawsuit-agreeing-to-pay-34m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/102827\/","title":{"rendered":"AstraZeneca settles Texas kickback lawsuit, agreeing to pay $34M"},"content":{"rendered":"

AstraZeneca will pay $34 million to resolve<\/a> a lawsuit that alleged the company used illegal kickbacks to induce providers to write prescriptions for products paid for by Texas Medicaid.<\/p>\n

The complaint, which was filed under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act (THFPA), claimed that AZ provided free nursing services and reimbursements to healthcare providers \u201cunder the guise of non-branded counseling,\u201d Texas said, to influence them to prescribe the company\u2019s drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many of the prescriptions were covered by Medicaid, Texas said, resulting in \u201cmillions of dollars in claims to Texas Medicaid that were tainted by AstraZeneca\u2019s illegal inducements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the last year, Texas has also filed similar lawsuits against Eli Lilly<\/a> and Sanofi<\/a> for providing free nurses and paying third parties who are alleged to have steered patients to those companies\u2019 products. In supplying these healthcare professionals, the companies can manage the care of patients in place of independent physicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not allow Big Pharma to misuse taxpayer dollars to put profit ahead of Texans\u2019 health,\u201d Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a release. \u201cMy office will continue aggressively pursuing healthcare fraud to protect taxpayer dollars and the integrity of our healthcare system.\u201d<\/p>\n

In agreeing to the settlement<\/a> (PDF), AZ did not admit to wrongdoing. The agreement is the \u201cresult of a mutual desire to settle their disputes amicably and to avoid the delay, expense, litigation costs, inconvenience, and uncertainty of protracted litigation,\u201d the settlement reads.<\/p>\n

“We are pleased to have reached a resolution to this industry-wide investigation that allows AstraZeneca to move forward enabling patients\u00a0including those receiving Medicaid\u00a0to access our lifesaving treatments,” an AZ spokesperson said in an email. “AstraZeneca denies these claims and continues\u00a0to firmly believe our programs are lawful, ethical and address an area of unmet need for patients.”<\/p>\n

A decade ago, Lilly and Novo Nordisk faced allegations<\/a> of using similar nursing services and \u201cwhite coat\u201d sales schemes, respectively, to influence the marketing of their insulin products.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AstraZeneca will pay $34 million to resolve a lawsuit that alleged the company used illegal kickbacks to induce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20662],"tags":[11153,28606,29324,33286,1476,4198,10253,21394,12133],"class_list":["post-102827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-astrazeneca","tag-astrazeneca","tag-eli-lilly","tag-fierce-pharma-homepage","tag-ken-paxton","tag-lawsuit","tag-marketing","tag-pharma","tag-settlement","tag-texas"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117088778183259915","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}