{"id":19263,"date":"2019-05-13T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T21:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/states-sue-drugmakers-over-alleged-generic-price-fixing-scheme\/"},"modified":"2019-05-13T13:50:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T21:50:00","slug":"states-sue-drugmakers-over-alleged-generic-price-fixing-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/states-sue-drugmakers-over-alleged-generic-price-fixing-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"States Sue Drugmakers Over Alleged Generic-Price-Fixing Scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Selena Simmons-Duffin<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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Jose A. Bernat Bacete\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has a skin condition called rosacea, and he says<\/a> he takes the antibiotic doxycycline once a day for it. <\/p>\n

In 2013, the average market price<\/a> of doxycycline rose from $20 to $1,829 a year later. That’s an increase of over 8,000%.<\/p>\n

Tong alleges in a new lawsuit<\/a> that this kind of price jump is part of an industrywide conspiracy to fix prices. <\/p>\n

The suit is a whopper \u2014 at least 43 states are suing 20 companies, and the document is over 500 pages long. It was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit alleges that sometimes one company would decide to raise prices on a particular drug, and other companies would follow suit. Other times, companies would agree to divide up the market rather than competing for market share by lowering prices. <\/p>\n

It says these kind of activities have been happening for years and that companies would avoid creating evidence by making these agreements on golf outings or during “girls nights outs” or over text message. <\/p>\n

In several examples, the suit cites call logs between executives at different companies, showing a flurry of phone calls right before several companies would all raise prices in lockstep. <\/p>\n