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CNMI gets $25.5K in Taxol settlement funds
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Posted on Jun 30 2004
Attorney General Pamela Brown announced yesterday the arrival of settlement checks returning $25,529.00 to CNMI government agencies constituting compensation for purchases of the anticancer drug Taxol®, or its generic form paclitaxel.
The amount also represented settlement of civil penalties in connection with purchases of these medicines.
The settlement was recovered in an antitrust case in the federal District Court for the District of Columbia in which Brown joined the attorneys general of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories as counsel for a class of individual consumers who paid for Taxol® and its generic equivalent paclitaxel.
The lawsuit asserted that, because of invalid patients claimed by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. for its anticancer drug Taxol®, lower cost generic substitutes were delayed in arriving on the market, resulting in higher prices to those who paid for the drug. In November 2003 the Court approved a settlement negotiated by the attorneys general on behalf of consumers—government and private—in all the states and territories.
In addition to the checks paid out to CNMI government agencies, consumers who paid all or part of the cost for treatments with Taxol® or paclitaxel during the period from Jan. 1, 1999 through Feb. 28, 2003, and who submitted valid claims during the court-established claims period ending Feb. 29, 2004, will receive reimbursement of at least $525. Consumers who paid the entire cost for two or more treatments will be paid $438 for each such treatment.
Nationally, 12,723 consumers will recover a total of $7,242,114. Some 13,000 vials of Taxol will also be provided free of charge to poor cancer patients.
Specifically, the checks that were received yesterday by the CNMI Attorney General’s Office will reimburse the CNMI Medicaid program $3,970, and the Retirement Fund $1,459, based upon the number of Taxol treatments that were funded through these agencies. The CNMI General Fund will receive a payment of $20,000 settlement for the alleged anticompetitive practices.
