The US Attorney’s Office has reached a $3.5 million settlement with specialty pharmacy Advanced Care Scripts, Inc. (ACS), to resolve allegations that ACS conspired with pharmaceutical manufacturer Teva Neuroscience, Inc. (Teva), to enable Teva to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients taking Copaxone, a Teva drug approved for treatment of multiple sclerosis. From approximately October 2006 through January 2015, ACS served as a contracted vendor for Teva and provided, among other things, benefits investigation services to certain patients who had been prescribed Copaxone. As part of the settlement, ACS acknowledged certain facts, including that it relayed data from two foundations, Chronic Disease Fund (CDF) and The Assistance Fund (TAF), to Teva so that Teva could correlate its payments to the foundations with the amounts of money the foundations spent on Copaxone patients. ACS further acknowledged that, when the foundations lacked funding and were not accepting new applications for Medicare co-pay coverage, ACS provided regular updates to Teva on the number of Medicare Part D patients serviced by ACS who had prescriptions for Copaxone, met the criteria for foundation co-pay coverage, and were awaiting foundation co-pay coverage.
