False Claims Act Update & Alert
Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund | Washington, D.C. | WWW.TAF.ORG
February 15, 2008
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Alabama Takes on Pharma Fraud
Alabama doesn't have a state False Claims Act, but its Attorney General wants to recover money stolen from the state Medicaid program. The result: a massive trial with a "Who's Who" of lawyers in tow. In the first case up, the state is seeking $40 million from AstraZeneca. >> To read more
Amgen Subpoenaed for Enbrel
New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has subpoenaed Amgen about possible off-label marketing of Enbrel. Enbrel costs over $25,000 a year, and it is reportedly being off-label marketed as a treatment for moderate psoriasis. >> To read more
A Free-Fraud Zone?
Will overseas contractors be exempt from a new program to ferret out fraud? Not if DoJ Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher has anything to say about it. She is moving to close a loophole that mysteriously showed up in a draft regulation published in the Federal Register. >> To read
Counting False Claims Act Cases
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has submitted answers to questions asked of him at his July 24, 2007 appearance before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Answers to False Claims Act questions begin on page 51 and run to page 58 (click here to read PDF).
- The Civil Division, together with the United States Attorneys’ Offices, currently has approximately 1,000 qui tam cases under seal, of which 630 are in the health care arena, and of which 150 are in the pharmaceutical arena.
- Of the 1,000 qui tam cases under seal, 230 are procurement fraud cases, of which approximately 135 deal with fraud against the Department of Defense.
- DoJ says it has about 30 Iraq qui tam cases under investigation and under seal.
- DoJ says that since FY 2004, the average length of time from the Civil Division’s receipt of a qui tam case until the it notifies the court of its election to join or decline, is approximately 13 months.
Fight Fraud: Remove The Cap
It's campaign season, which means not end to politicians pledging to fight "waste, fraud and abuse." Not said: Many of these same folks have been silently complicit in keeping the Civil Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice on starvation rations. Buried in former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' answers to a Senate Judiciary Committee questions, however, is a simple step Congress can take to turn things around:"The Department’s base budget for the Civil Division is devoted almost exclusively to defensive litigation – cases that require representation to ensure that the government does not lose hundreds of billions of dollars in adverse judgments and settlements. As the number of defensive cases has outpaced the availability of appropriated funds, funding for affirmative cases has increasingly relied on non-appropriated sources such as the HCFAC and the Three Percent Fund. Over the last several years, the amounts available from these sources have failed to keep pace with the increasing costs of salaries and benefits, and other costs associated with the Department’s fraud enforcement efforts. The HCFAC account is subject to a cap that has been frozen, and Three Percent Fund resources fluctuate in accordance with the level of recoveries which, while very substantial overall, can vary significantly from year to year. Thus, a significant way that Congress can strengthen the Department’s ability to vigorously pursue fraud cases is to raise the cap on the HCFAC account. We encourage Congress to support the Administration’s efforts to increase funding in this important enforcement area."