In a letter sent to six major retailers selling in California, state Attorney General Jerry Brown warned of a number of toys that were found to contain dangerous amounts of lead. Children are particularly susceptible to the risk of lead poisoning and may ingest lead when they put toys in their mouths or transfer the lead from their hands to their mouths or to food.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that drug store chain CVS has agreed to pay $875,000 to settle charges that the company sold products as late as two years past their expiration dates. Over-the-counter drugs, eggs, milk, and baby formula were among the items sold at over 142 CVS stores in New York after their expiration dates had lapsed.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal contacted 13 makers and distributers of seasonal flu vaccines over allegations of high price fixing and preferred treatment for big retailers. The seasonal flu vaccines are in short supply due to the switch made by drug makers to produce the H1N1 vaccine.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit with 14 other states in federal court in Massachusetts accusing Amgen Inc. and Amerisource of encouraging doctors to bill third-party insurers for samples they received for free.The companies also allegedly offered medical professionals kickbacks or weekend retreats for selling its drug.
One hundred million dollars from settlements with over a dozen insurance companies will go toward a new national database to help consumers understand insurance company reimbursements for out-of-network fees, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday. Mr. Cuomo’s office had conducted an investigation into Ingenix and health insurance companies and determined that the industry systematically understated doctor’s fees for over a decade. Within a year, a nonprofit company, FAIR Health, will be set up to take the place of the private database and provide consumers with accurate information.
Several lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice against four pharmaceutical companies for failing to pay appropriate rebates to state Medicaid programs resulted in a $124 million settlement.The Attorneys General of New York, New Hampshire, and Ohio assisted with the investigation.
Martha Coakley, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, has filed lawsuits against four companies allegedly using deceptive practices to market discount medical plans that do not actually meet the state’s standard of minimum creditable coverage. Coakley’s office has proposed reforms to require sellers of health insurance in Massachusetts to fully disclose how their plans work.
In a letter to Kellogg’s, General Mills, and PepsiCo, Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal raised concern about “Smart Choices” labels. Meant to designate nutritional foods, the labels have been used on many seemingly unhealthy products including sugary breakfast cereals and mayonnaise. Blumenthal’s investigation will ascertain whether the labeling campaign violates the state’s consumer protection law, which bars misleading or false product claims.
Two lawsuits have been filed by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson against companies that allegedly sold non-insurance health products to consumers disguised as credible insurance to consumers.The companies targeted Minnesotans in need of coverage.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown is looking into claims that the state's top health insurers reject about 20 percent of medical claims. He has stated that a high denial rate suggest the system itself is dysfunctional.
The West Virginia Attorney General’s filed a lawsuit against CVS Pharmacy, Kmart, Kroger, Walgreen Pharmacy and Target alleging that they all violated a state law designed to promote use of generic equivalents for brand-name prescription drugs. The lawsuit contends that rather than pass on the savings to consumers from the substitution of less-expensive generic drugs, the pharmacies have instead pocketed them.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot reached a settlement agreement after Alpha Therapeutic Corp. falsely reported inflated prices to the Medicaid program thus over-reimbursing providers for their drugs. The result was increased profits to providers and an unlawful market niche for the drug company throughout the 1990’s.
Following a 2005 lawsuit filed against Baxter Healthcare Corporation based on allegations that the drug makers fraudulently published inflated Average Wholesale Prices, which Medicaid programs used to determine the reimbursement amounts for drugs prescribed to Medicaid patients, Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced that her office has recovered $6.8 million for the State through a settlement agreement.
Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper has agreed to a $1.3 million settlement from a pharmaceutical company to settle claims that the company violated the state’s False Claim Act. Kindred Healthcare, Inc. and its partner PharMerica had been under investigation for overcharging pharmaceuticals sold to a Tennessee-based healthcare provider.
As part of a settlement forged by a multistate coalition of attorneys general and federal officials, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly will pay $22.5 million to the Massachussetts Medicaid Program. The national settlement, the largest ever for a health fraud investigation, has resulted in over $1 billion being paid to state Medicaid programs and other federal programs.
A guest column in the Kalamazoo Gazette by Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, in which he advocates for a number of reforms of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, including increased state governmental oversight and other reforms.
Coverage of the ongoing dispute between members of the Tennessee press and state officials over the release of the results of state investigations of abuse and neglect allegations at The Winfrey Center, a facility for patients with severe mental disabilities.
An expansive overview of recent efforts undertaken by attorneys general across the country to litigate against health care mismanagement and support health care reform legislation.
Cereal FACTS, presents a comprehensive and independent science-based evaluation of cereal company marketing to children and adolescents in 2008 through early 2009. This study was conducted by the Yale's Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity.
Researchers at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that 9th grade students were more likely to be obese when their schools were within a tenth of a mile of a fast food restaurant.
An additional study demonstrating that children who lived and went to school in close proximity to fast-food restaurants more likely to consume unhealthier diets and become overweight. The researchers recommend policy changes to limit the number of fast-food restaurants near schools.
One of four papers that resulted from the 2008 National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control, this paper addresses gaps in laws pertaining to healthy lifestyles, places, and societies and presents applicable laws and legal authorities that can close those gaps.
With the goal of helping policymakers to avoid potential constitutional problems in the formulation of obesity policy, this paper outlines the legal principles most relevant to obesity policy: police power; allocation of federal power among federal, state, and local governments; freedom of speech; property rights, privacy, equal protection, and contract rights.
This article reviews existing knowledge of the impact of marketing and addresses the value of various legal, legislative, regulatory, and industry-based approaches to changing massively expanding food marketing practices that attempt to promote unhealthy foods by targeting children.
A comparative analysis of the tobacco and food industries that finds significant similarities in the actions that these industries have taken in response to concern that their products cause harm.
A review of the rationale for regulatory action to combat obesity that examines legal issues raised by initiatives to date and comments on
the prospects for public health law in the area of obesity.
A discussion of the public health rationale the government’s legal authority for the enactment of menu-labelinglaws in restaurants, which concludes that the legislative climate surrounding menulabeling laws is currently positive and part of a larger effort to address issues of diet and obesity.
