Lawyers acting for local government in the US have told "Reuters" that the opioid addiction treatment drugs that Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) has agreed to donate greatly inflates their real value. The lawyers are pushing for Teva to make a much larger cash payment than the $250 million also agreed with the attorney generals of four US states.
Drug pricing consultants and industry analysts have estimated that the cost to manufacture the $23 billion of a generic version of Suboxone, a combination of buprenorphine and the opioid reversal agent naloxone, which Teva has agreed to donate, could actually be as low as $1.5 billion, "Reuters" reports.
The lawyers insisted to "Reuters" that the proposal would not be enough to address a nationwide addiction crisis that has claimed some 400,000 lives over the last two decades.
Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer on the plaintiffs' executive committee that is managing more than 2,300 federal lawsuits consolidated in the US District Court in Cleveland said to "Reuters" that the deal is, "overvalued to make the settlement look better. I don’t believe a no-cash payment from Teva, one of the largest generic manufacturers in the world, is appropriate."
Teva is looking to reach a nationwide settlement over its role in selling opioid painkillers, together with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the three largest US drug distributors, AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 24, 2019
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