{"id":185628,"date":"2014-09-23T21:35:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T02:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/23\/finally-20\/"},"modified":"2014-09-23T21:35:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T02:35:00","slug":"finally-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/23\/finally-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The FTC is <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/pharmalot\/2014\/09\/08\/ftc-sues-drug-makers-over-pay-to-delay-deals\/\">suing brand name drug makers over their payments to generic drug manufacturers to delay their production<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">For the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that so-called pay-to-delay deals may be subject to greater antitrust scrutiny, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit charging drug makers with violating anti-trust laws and hurting consumers in their collective pocketbooks.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Specifically, the agency charged several drug makers \u2013 including AbbVie ; Abbott Laboratories , which spun off AbbVie, and Teva Pharmaceuticals \u2013 for striking deals that delayed the availability of the widely promoted AndroGel testosterone replacement therapy, a $1 billion seller.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe believe the defendants\u2019 anticompetitive conduct has forced consumers to overpay hundreds of millions of dollars for this medication,\u201d FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez told the media in a briefing, in which she noted the agency hopes to force the drug makers to disgorge \u201ctheir ill-gotten gains.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In these deals, a brand-name drug maker settles with a generic rival in exchange for ending patent litigation and launching a copycat medicine at a future date. The pharmaceutical industry contends the deals are not only legal, but actually allow drugs to reach consumers faster than if litigation continued.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Also known as reverse payment settlements, the deals emerged as an unintended consequence of the Hatch-Waxman Act that was designed to accelerate access to lower-cost generics. An FTC report in 2012 found there 40 potential pay-to-deals, up from 28 the year before.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Supreme Court ruling, which reviewed a lawsuit brought by the FTC against Actavis, was a boost to the agency, because it supported the contention that pay-to-delay deals may violate antitrust laws and, effectively, allowed the FTC to pursue lawsuits against drug makers.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In its lawsuit, the FTC charges that AbbVie, Abbott and Bevins Healthcare filed \u201csham\u201d patent litigation against potential generic rivals, including Teva, and then entered into an allegedly illegal patent settlement in order to thwart competition.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve said it before (like the post just before this one):&nbsp; Our current model of capitalism is a harmful and corrupt system that resembles nothing more than the book <i>Lord of the Flies<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The FTC is suing brand name drug makers over their payments to generic drug manufacturers to delay their production: For the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that so-called pay-to-delay deals may be subject to greater antitrust scrutiny, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit charging drug makers with &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1013,1109,972,1191,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-drugs","category-ip","category-justice","category-patent","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}