DoJ ex­pands crack­down on Medicare kick­back schemes — Astel­las and Am­gen to pay near­ly $125M to re­solve al­le­ga­tions

Weeks af­ter Jazz Phar­ma, Lund­beck and Alex­ion were dis­ci­plined by the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice for al­leged­ly em­ploy­ing char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions to help cov­er Medicare out-of-pock­et costs to urge the use of their own med­i­cines, two oth­er drug­mak­ers — Astel­las and Am­gen — are in trou­ble for pur­port­ed­ly en­gag­ing in sim­i­lar kick­back schemes.

The two com­pa­nies have agreed to pay the DoJ a com­bined $124.75 mil­lion to re­solve the al­le­ga­tions and signed to five-year cor­po­rate in­tegri­ty agree­ments, which re­quire them to set up mea­sures to pro­mote in­de­pen­dence from any pa­tient as­sis­tance pro­grams to which they do­nate, and to pro­cure com­pli­ance-re­lat­ed cer­ti­fi­ca­tions from com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives and board mem­bers.

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