Humana Sues Dozens of Generic Drugmakers Over Alleged Price-Fixing

Insurance giant Humana sued more than two dozen generic drugmakers in a federal court on Aug. 3 alleging they conspired to inflate prices for commonly used drugs.

The defendants — including Actavis, Mylan, Teva, Dr. Reddy’s, Novartis, Amneal, and Par — conspired to block competition for their drugs and fix prices and made arrangements not to compete with one another, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Humana claims it was forced to pay “grossly inflated” prices for 16 generics due to the alleged misconduct, including the local anesthetic lidocaine, the hypertension and heart rhythm treatment propranolol, and the cholesterol drug pravastatin. Between 2005 and 2014, the arrangements caused prices for the drugs involved to skyrocket by up to 8,000 percent, as in the case of doxycycline hyclate, an antibiotic used to treat infections and rosacea, according to the complaint.