Illegal marketing costs AstraZeneca $520 million

The settlement centers on the Delaware-based company’s efforts to promote Seroquel, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved to treat disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar depression. The government alleges that AstraZeneca aggressively marketed the drug for unapproved uses — such as to treat Alzheimer’s disease and anxiety — to physicians, who then put patients at risk by prescribing it.

The Justice Department also contends that the company violated the federal anti-kickback statute by making illegal payments to physicians. They were allegedly recruited by AstraZeneca to present themselves as authors of articles the company had written about the drug.

The civil settlement was the latest step in an Obama administration crackdown on health-care fraud. “We will not let such actions stand,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a news conference. “This administration is committed to recovering taxpayer money lost to health-care fraud.”

Glenn Engelmann, the company’s U.S. general counsel, said AstraZeneca denies the allegations but “takes its obligations very seriously under its agreements with the government. . . . It is in the best interest of AstraZeneca to resolve these matters and to move forward with our business of discovering and developing important, life-changing medicines.”

Source: WP