Industry: Health Care

Two weeks ago, the District of Colorado denied defendants’ motion to dismiss in a criminal case targeting agreements between competitors not to solicit (or “poach”) each other’s employees.  United States v. DaVita Inc. et al. is part of a wave of four criminal cases regarding no-poach and wage-fixing deals brought by the Department of Justice for the first time ever over the past year. The DOJ contends that the arrangements at issue are per se unlawful under the Sherman Act, even though no appellate court has ever expressly held as such.  Defendants in each case, including DaVita, moved to dismiss the charges, asserting that these types of agreements are not per se illegal and that they lacked fair notice that their conduct was a crime.    

In addition to the DaVita decision, the motion to dismiss in United States v. Jindal was also recently denied by the Eastern District of Texas.  Motions to dismiss in two other cases remain pending, but these first decisions illuminate how courts may treat similar prosecutions going forward. 

Antitrust litigation has been ongoing for several years in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama against one of the biggest business associations in America, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (“BCBSA”) and its members.  We previously wrote about this litigation here and here.  BCBSA is comprised of independent health insurers that license the “Blue Cross” and “Blue Shield” trademarks from BCBSA.  As a condition of their licenses, BCBSA members grant each member exclusive geographic territories where each is allowed to use the Blue trademarks; some BCBSA members also happen to enjoy very high market shares in a number of their respective jurisdictions.  There are also licensing rules that limit how much revenue each member can derive from lines of business that do not use the Blue trademarks.  One of these rules was the “National Best Efforts Rule.”  This rule required that two-thirds of each member’s national revenue be derived from Blue-branded plans.  In other words, while each member could theoretically compete in others’ territories using brands that did not include the “Blue Cross” and “Blue Shield” trademarks, there was a cap on how much business a member could generate this way.  These restrictions allegedly reduced competition between BCBSA members

After two hearings over the last week, Judge Richard J. Leon of the District Court for the District of Columbia seems to have put the brakes on the well-publicized merger between health care giants CVS and Aetna.  The merger obtained conditional approval from the DOJ’s Antitrust Division on October 10, 2018, and the parties seemed poised for court approval when they appeared before Judge Leon on November 29, 2018.

Last month, we reported on a partial settlement in an antitrust case alleging that entities within the Duke and the University of North Carolina systems agreed not to hire each other’s medical personnel unless the lateral hire involved a promotion.  The Court has now granted in part the plaintiff’s motion to certify a class.

On January 10, 2018, in In re Lantus Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litig., the District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed the antitrust case against Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC (“Sanofi”), the manufacturer of Lantus and Lantus SoloSTAR, which use the insulin product glargine to treat Type I and Type II diabetes.  The plaintiffs in the multi-district litigation, a group of purchasers of the Lantus products, alleged that Sanofi unlawfully prolonged its monopoly for the glargine products after the expiration of the relevant patent in two ways.  First, the plaintiffs alleged that Sanofi improperly listed six patents in the FDA’s Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations (the “Orange Book”).  Second, the plaintiffs alleged that Sanofi pursued sham litigation against Eli Lilly in which Sanofi asserted claims of patent infringement without any reasonable basis. That litigation was settled by Sanofi and Lilly shortly before trial.

“But what is more common than exclusive dealing?”  Affirming summary judgment for defendant Saint Francis Medical Center, the Seventh Circuit recently held that the hospital’s contracts with health care insurers—though admittedly exclusive—did not harm competition.  In fact, such contracts were likely the product of a competitive market in which Saint Francis was simply the best competitor.

The incentive is high to identify a Sherman Act violation in your competitor’s conduct—three times higher, to be precise, than to bring a claim for an ordinary business tort or even a false advertising claim under the Lanham Act.  But as we noted in December, the Fifth Circuit recently refused to recognize a claim for attempted monopolization under Section 2 based on a defendant’s false advertising “absent a demonstration that [the] false advertisements had the potential to eliminate, or did in fact eliminate, competition.”  The court relied on a prior decision in which it expressed “extreme reluctance to allow a treble damage verdict to rest upon business torts alone.”  The case is Retractable Technologies, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Co.

Since we last reported on the state and federal government’s generic drug pricing investigations and litigations (click here to read more), the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has obtained its first guilty pleas.  On January 9, 2017, Heritage Pharmaceutical Inc.’s former CEO and its former president (the defendants are brothers-in-law) pleaded guilty to manipulating the prices of and divvying up customers for an antibiotic, doxycycline hyclate, and a diabetes medicine, glyburide.  The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on September 28, 2017, and they face up to ten years of imprisonment.  The government’s filings in other lawsuits make clear that the defendants’ sentencing was delayed until the defendants complete their cooperation with the government.

In a December 2, 2016 decision, Retractable Technologies, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Company, the Fifth Circuit opined on when false advertising can lead to liability under the Sherman Act. The Fifth Circuit’s answer: Very rarely.

PinnacleHealth System and Penn State Hershey Medical Center have abandoned their merger plans following a Third Circuit defeat last month.  The announcement underscores the uncertainty faced by hospitals considering consolidation as a way to keep costs down and promote a value-based system of payment.

The Department of Justice and attorneys general from multiple states last week sued to halt two health insurance mergers, each worth billions of dollars.  

The challenged deals are Anthem's planned merger with Cigna and Aetna's proposed acquisition of Humana.  The deals would whittle down the number of top competitors in the health insurance industry from five to just three: an Anthem-Cigna entity, an Aetna-Humana entity, and the current industry giant UnitedHealth Group.  Each would have revenue of more than $100 billion a year. 

On June 14, 2016, in FTC v. Advocate Health Care et al., No. 15-cv-11473, the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to stop the merger of Advocate Health Care Network and NorthShore University HealthSystem.

As we have reported previously, the Federal Trade Commission recently has taken an aggressive stance in regulating mergers in the healthcare sector.  The Commission has racked up a string of victories, but last week the Middle District of Pennsylvania dealt a blow to that track record by denying the Commission’s request for a preliminary injunction to block a merger of two major healthcare providers in central Pennsylvania: Penn State Hershey Medical Center and PinnacleHealth Systems.  The FTC is pursuing an emergency appeal to the Third Circuit, but this loss could signal a waning in the FTC’s enforcement authority in the healthcare sector.

Direct and indirect purchasers of Nexium recently appealed District of Massachusetts Judge William Young’s denial of a request for a new trial in In re: Nexium to the First Circuit.

Drug company Turing Pharmaceuticals made headlines recently when it reportedly raised the price of Daraprim, used commonly by AIDS patients to fight life-threatening infections, from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. Amidst vociferous protest, the company agreed to reduce the price. But the attention garnered by media reports has led to some allegations that Turing may have run afoul of antitrust laws through a less-publicized aspect of its marketing of Daraprim: the elimination of certain distribution channels, including wholesalers and retailers.

This is our fourth post on the DOJ’s expanding investigation into possible price fixing by generic drug manufacturers.  Since our last update, the DOJ has subpoenaed Allergan Plc’s Actavis unit.  In its August 6, 2015, 8-K, Allergan disclosed that it had received a subpoena from the DOJ “seeking information relating to the marketing and pricing of certain of the Company’s generic products and communications with competitors about such products.”  As the fourth largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the U.S., Allergan is the largest company that has been targeted by the DOJ.

We have previously posted about the New York Attorney General’s “product hopping” suit against Actavis and its subsidiary, Forest Laboratories LLC (together, “Actavis”), including our analysis of the District Court’s opinion enjoining Actavis from discontinuing sales of the Alzheimer’s drug Namenda IR, and of the Second Circuit’s decision affirming the district court’s ruling.  The Second Circuit panel that heard the appeal has now denied rehearing, and the active members of the Second Circuit have also denied rehearing en banc.

On June 26, 2015, the Third Circuit extended Actavis to non-cash settlements and held that Actavis can cover a no-AG agreement – “a settlement in which the patentee drug manufacturer agrees to relinquish its right to produce an ‘authorized generic’ of the drug” during the statutorily guaranteed 180 days of market exclusivity for the first-filing generic drug manufacturer.

We’ve previously covered the New York State Attorney General’s (“NYS AG”) lawsuit against Actavis PLC and Forest Laboratories seeking to prevent them from discontinuing sales of the Forest drug Namenda IR, which is used to treat Alzheimer’s disease. New York has alleged that Actavis and Forest are engaging in “product hopping”—attempting to force prescribers and patients to switch to a new extended-release version of Namenda (Namenda XR) before a generic version can be launched. 

Since we last reported on the generic pricing investigations, the investigations have expanded. Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc. disclosed in its March 13, 2015 Annual Report that it had received a December 5, 2014 subpoena from the DOJ’s Antitrust Division that sought “communications with competitors regarding [Par’s] authorized generic version of Covis’s Lanoxin® (digoxin) oral tablets and [Par’s] generic doxycycline products.”

Promoting competition among health care providers remains a top priority for the Federal Trade Commission and it is expected that the FTC will continue to challenge mergers in the health care industry. 

St. Luke’s Health System and Saltzer Medical Group last week asked the full Ninth Circuit to reconsider its ruling that their merger violated federal antitrust laws. 

The Second Circuit announced on Monday that it would hear Actavis PLC’s appeal to overturn the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Robert Sweet of the Southern District of New York as soon as possible, with a projected date for oral argument during the week of April 13.  

The Ninth Circuit on Tuesday held that St. Luke’s Health System’s purchase of a physician practice group violated federal antitrust laws. In doing so, it upheld a district court’s order that the merger be dissolved.  

As we reported earlier, the jury in In re: Nexium found that AstraZeneca had violated the antitrust laws by acting to keep generics off the market but that no generic would have been introduced earlier in the market even without the violation. Thus, the jury found that the plaintiffs were not entitled to relief.