COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Monday that he was joining an anti-trust lawsuit over the price of generic drugs.
Ohio joins 44 states in the suit against 20 of the nation's largest generic drug manufacturers alleging a broad conspiracy to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition and unreasonably restrain trade for more than 100 different generic drugs.
“Ohioans who need medicine might think generic drugs would be their cheapest option – but some manufacturers have rigged the systems to avoid competition,” Yost said in a statement. “That's not how a free market works, and the conspiracy to avoid competition makes prices higher – and it’s against the law. This lawsuit is the prescription for lower medicine prices in a free market.”
According to Yost's office, the drugs at issue account for billions in sales in the U.S. and the alleged schemes increased prices affecting the health insurance market, taxpayer-funded healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and individuals who must pay artificially-inflated prices for their prescription drugs.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, alleges that Teva, Sandoz, Mylan, Pfizer and 16 other generic drugmakers engaged in a broad, coordinated and systematic campaign to conspire with each other to fix prices, allocate markets and rig bids for more than 100 different generic drugs.