In settlement, Louisiana gets $7.6 million from N.J. drug firm

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Louisiana received $7.6 million from a New Jersey drug firm as part of a multistate settlement of complaints about its marketing and distribution tactics.

The settlement, announced on Thursday, involved a total of $435 million to be be divided among 47 states and the District of Columbia. Schering-Plough agreed to pay $255 million in penalties as part of the settlement.

Charles Foti, Louisiana’s attorney general, announced Louisiana’s share on Friday.

The company was accused of offering lower rebates to Medicaid than it offered certain private insurance companies for the allergy drug Claritin and the Potassium supplement K-Dur. The company was also accused of improperly marketing a brain cancer drug called Temodar as a treatment for types of cancer it wasn’t approved to treat.

Louisiana will recover nearly $2.5 million; the remaining $5.1 million goes to the federal government to reimburse its share of the Medicaid costs, Foti’s office said.