Johnson & Johnson.
According to a recently unsealed lawsuit filed in New Jersey federal court – Johnson & Johnson has sued two divisions of health insurer, Cigna. The lawsuit alleges that Cigna worked with a drug-benefit middleman to drain J&J financial-assistance funds that were put aside for patients taking their more costly drugs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier in 2022 J&J took similar steps while initiating litigation against the middleman group, SaveOnSP LLC – expanding upon long-lasting tensions over the price of drugs, amongst manufacturers, insurers, pharmacy benefits managers and others.
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In the most recent lawsuit, J&J added Cigna’s Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits manager, and specialty pharmacy Accredo as defendants. The pharmaceutical company alleges that the Cigna units worked on a program with SaveOnSP which ultimately forced J&J to pay more than $100 million in drug copay assistance than it would have otherwise, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to the lawsuit, J&J claims that Express Scripts and Accredo have worked with SaveOnSP since 2016. Additionally, they allege that Express Scripts promoted SaveOnSP to its customers and in return received a share of the fees that SaveOnSP charged. Meanwhile, Accredo was the exclusive pharmacy for most patients in SaveOnSP’s program, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Patient assistance is for patients, not middlemen,” J&J said in a statement to Seeking Alpha. “Save On is diverting and stealing patient assistance support from programs like J&J’s patient assistance program for the financial benefit of their own vertically integrated companies – but to the detriment of the patients the programs were designed to help. Our action is intended to stop these harmful practices and protect patients’ access to their medicines.”
According to the lawsuit, J&J is seeking monetary damages in an amount to be determined at trial and a court order that the companies agree to stop the program.
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