Chi­nese agency says sus­pects ar­rest­ed in As­traZeneca in­sur­ance fraud probe

Mul­ti­ple sus­pects were ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with an al­leged med­ical in­sur­ance fraud scheme or­ga­nized by As­traZeneca Chi­na em­ploy­ees, the coun­try’s Na­tion­al Health­care Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NHSA) said on Sat­ur­day.

The ar­rests oc­curred af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion found ev­i­dence that staff mem­bers tam­pered with the ge­net­ic test­ing re­sults of tu­mor pa­tients in an at­tempt to de­fraud med­ical in­sur­ance funds, ac­cord­ing to the NHSA. As­traZeneca has re­port­ed sub­stan­tial growth in Chi­na de­spite the steep dis­counts it had to make in or­der to get on the coun­try’s Na­tion­al Re­im­burse­ment Drug List, with rev­enue in the coun­try in­creas­ing by 10% in Q3, amount­ing to near­ly $4.7 bil­lion for the first three quar­ters of the year.

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