California’s attorney general said on Thursday the state has filed a lawsuit accusing 39 pharmaceutical companies of bilking the state’s Medicaid program of hundreds of millions of dollars by inflating drug prices.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he has added companies including Amgen Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc to a previous complaint accusing Abbott Laboratories and Wyeth of hiding the true costs of their drugs so that payments from Medi-Cal would be artificially inflated. Medi-Cal is the name for California’s Medicaid program for the indigent, which is financed by the state and federal government.
