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PhRMA Fires Back at Ohio Drug Pricing Petitioners

March 8, 2016

PhRMA is firing back at an Ohio citizen ballot initiative aiming to lower drug prices, claiming in a lawsuit that the activists involved failed to legally acquire a sufficient number of signatures to submit the petition to the General Assembly.

According to the lawsuit — filed in the Ohio Supreme Court — the trade group raises allegations against the legality of the circulation of the petition by advocates of the Ohio Drug Price Relief Act, which would require state programs to pay the same amount or less for prescription medications as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The lawsuit notes that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted submitted the petition to the state’s General Assembly Feb. 4, but did so “with reservations” based on the “unprecedented quantity of suspicious ‘strikethroughs’ of signatures” and other “factual circumstances suggesting improper, potentially fraudulent circulator attestations.”