Pfizer to pay nearly $60M over kickbacks for migraine drug once promoted by Lady Gaga

[mountaineer]

Pfizer to pay nearly $60M over kickbacks for migraine drug once promoted by Lady Gaga
Biohaven, a company Pfizer bought, paid for speaker honoraria and meals so physicians would prescribe Nurtec ODT more often
By Michael Dorgan - FOXBusiness
Jan. 25, 2025

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer will pay nearly $60 million to resolve charges that a company it acquired paid kickbacks so that physicians would prescribe a specific migraine drug to patients, thereby defrauding Medicare and other federal health care programs.

The Justice Department announced Friday that Biohaven paid improper remuneration, including in the form of speaker honoraria and meals at high-end restaurants, to healthcare professionals to induce them to prescribe the migraine medication Nurtec ODT more often in violation of the anti-kickback statute.

The scheme took place from March 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2022. Pfizer bought Biohaven in October 2022.

Prosecutors said that certain prescribers who attended multiple speaker programs on the same topic received no educational benefit from attending repeat programs and that certain Biohaven speaker programs were attended by individuals with no educational need to attend, such as the speakers’ spouses, family members, or friends, or colleagues from the speakers’ own medical practice.

Pfizer ended the Nurtec speaker programs after paying $11.5 billion to buy Biohaven. ...

[mountaineer]

Nancy Pearcey
@NancyRPearcey
Pfizer's penalty total since 2000:   $11,201,814,123
That's just the past 4 years.
9:30 PM · Jan 25, 2025

[mountaineer]

My s-i-l used to work at Pfizer. A Ph.D., I believe she originally worked in research, but later was in marketing. She was one of those Pfizer employees jetting off to luxury resorts and the like to schmooze with and persuade doctors to prescribe the latest and greatest drug for whatever ailment came along.

[PeteS in CA]

When Pfizer bought Biohaven Pfizer bought Biohaven's legal problems (and knew that at the time of purchase). The article headline is misleading in that it makes it sound like Pfizer had paid the kickbacks.