Pa. Attorney General’s Office sues insulin manufacturers and retailers over artificially inflated prices – Audacy

Pa. Attorney General’s Office sues insulin manufacturers and retailers over artificially inflated prices  Audacy

The suit accuses insulin and diabetes manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi Aventis of colluding in “shadow pricing,” where companies raise prices in lockstep with competitors to maximize profit rather than competing to keep prices low. | KYW Newsradio PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is suing diabetes drug manufacturers and the companies that set prices, saying they’ve colluded for decades to gouge people who rely on the medicine. In its 167-page lawsuit filed in Commonwealth Court, the Attorney General’s Office says the same insulin that sold for $20 in the 1990s now sells for $350, arguing prices started rising in the mid-2000s despite the cost to make insulin dropping over the same period.

The suit accuses insulin and diabetes manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi Aventis of colluding in “shadow pricing,” where companies raise prices in lockstep with competitors to maximize profit rather than competing to keep prices low. It also says Pharmacy Benefit Managers, Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and Optum Rx play a key role, pointing to 2003, when PBMs began consolidating and gaining significant pricing power, saying in some cases price hikes from 2003 to 2016 were as high as 1000%. The suit shows numerous charts with overlays of competing companies’ prices, stating they show the stepped increases occur at the same