Articles Posted in Uncategorized

The Law Office of Michael D. Fitzgerald is a proud member of the TAF Education Fund.

If you understand the current interplay between Average Wholesale Price (AWP), ingredient cost, discounts off AWP given by Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and other elements that go into drug pricing, please give me a call as the more I learn, it is apparent the less that I know.

However, I do know one thing: any mother or father who shops in a supermarket would understand the basic cost of salt and sugar. I would bet that if you walked into any supermarket in the country and asked any individual, regardless of their native language, they would come within $3.00 of guessing the price of the appropriate cost of a pound of sugar or a pound of salt.

Imagine how shocked anyone would be to learn that Baxter International was selling “bags” of salt and sugar to Medicaid according to a lawsuit filed by the State of Louisiana. Now, admittedly, the “bag” of salt and the “bag” of sugar sold to Medicaid were actually in the form of a saline solution and a dextrose solution. The solutions were provided in intravenous drip bags. The drip bags are more difficult to produce than buying salt or sugar off the shelf, however, not terribly difficult.