The Broward County School Board is suing a group of insulin manufacturers it claims conspired to inflate the drug's prices, which have "risen more than tenfold" over the past 20 years.
The school district is self-insured, meaning it foots the bill for the health care costs of employees. As many as 3,500 employees may be affected by the price increases.
The board claims that the skyrocketing price of insulin is not natural, according to a report in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“Over that time, the average cost of consumer goods and services has almost doubled,” reads the lawsuit's summary. “The cost of some diabetes medications has risen more than tenfold.”
Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, which the board in an executive summary refers to as “the Insulin Cartel,” control 99% of the insulin market.
The lawsuit also claims pharmacy benefits managers CVS Health, Express Scripts and OptumRx colluded to widen the gap between the manufacturers' price and the selling price.
PBMs are third-party companies that manage prescription benefits and act as intermediaries between insurance companies, pharmacies and drug manufacturers.
When health care prices rise, the school district's budget feels the impact. Juan Martinez, a lawyer from Morgan & Morgan, told the board that the insulin expenses can add up.
“By our estimations, for every single insulin-dependent diabetic that the school board covers, you’re paying an excess of $5,000 to $6,000 per user, which is money that the board could use for a myriad of reasons,” he said.
The board agreed to contract the law firms Morgan & Morgan, Kopelowitz Ostrow Ferguson Weiselberg Gilbert, and Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm. The board joins a growing list of local governments and state attorneys general in a multidistrict litigation.
Since the lawyers are working on a fee contingency basis, the board incurs no upfront cost and will not pay unless and until damages are recovered. The lawyers' fee would be 25% of recovered damages.
An Eli Lilly spokesperson told the Sun Sentinel the allegations are "baseless." The spokesperson added that "counties and other local governments that have filed similar lawsuits have since abandoned these allegations because they were both aware of and benefited from these supposedly ‘secret’ rebates."
Mike DeAngeli, a spokesman for CVS Health, said the claims that “we play any role in determining the prices charged by manufacturers for their products are false, and we intend to vigorously defend against this baseless suit.”
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