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Tag: monopoly

Chesterfield pharma company to pay $30M in Suboxone settlement

Chesterfield County-based pharmaceutical manufacturer Indivior Inc. has reached a $30 million settlement agreement in a federal class-action antitrust lawsuit brought by a group of health plans over the manufacturer’s opioid addiction treatment drug, Suboxone.

The global parent company, Indivior PLC, announced the settlement Monday, and the plaintiffs filed a memorandum in support of the settlement agreement in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Suboxone is approved for use by recovering opioid addicts to avoid or reduce withdrawal symptoms while receiving treatment for addiction.

In the suit, which has lasted more than a decade, health plans representing members in Virginia and 47 other states, as well as  Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, alleged that Indivior violated state antitrust and consumer protection statues, resulting in the plans or its members paying higher prices for Suboxone and its generic equivalents. They allege that Indivior “engaged in an intricate anticompetitive scheme,” including price manipulation, a sham citizen petition and a delay through sabotage of the Federal Drug Administration’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) process to delay competition from generic versions of the drug.

The agreement will still need to complete the district court’s approval process, starting with initial approval from the court. Indivior expects to make the payment into an escrow account for the claimants in September.

“We remain focused on helping those suffering from substance use disorders and mental illness,” Indivior CEO Mark Crossley said in a statement. “Resolving these legacy legal matters at the right value helps us further our mission for patients and creates greater certainty for our stakeholders.”

Although Indivior has reached a settlement agreement for this lawsuit, the company faces a separate trial scheduled to begin Oct. 30 in a lawsuit brought by drug wholesalers that bought Suboxone from Indivior.

In June, Indivior agreed to pay $102 million to settle a lawsuit brought by 41 states and Washington, D.C., alleging it stifled competition.

In July 2020, Indivior entered a $600 million plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. state attorney generals, in which subsidiary Indivior Solutions Inc. pled guilty to one count of making a false statement regarding health care matters. A month earlier, former Indivior PLC CEO Shaun Thaxter  pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in connection with Indivior’s misrepresentations to the Massachusetts state Medicaid program regarding the safety of its Suboxone Film product. Thaxter was sentenced in October 2020 to six months in federal prison.

A spinoff of British firm Reckitt Benckiser Group, Indivior reported $901 million in 2022 net revenue. It has approximately 1,000 employees.

Media matters

It’s hard to have a conversation about anything in the headlines, especially anything to do with technology or politics, without some blame being assigned to “the media,” as if there were one enormous unified communications cloud shaping all our collective thoughts. That would be enormous for certain, but the media is perhaps more consolidated than one might think.

Thinking back, the early cable and pre-internet days seem like living in a land before time, when the economics of the media business were easy, and the industry was represented by voices aplenty.

In 1975, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules to prevent companies from owning newspapers and television stations in the same market.

In 1999, the FCC subsequently adopted an “eight voices” test to ensure that common ownership of media outlets in a single local market would not reduce diversity of opinion or minority opportunities. The underlying thesis was that multiple voices would promote competition and better serve the public interest.

After decades of litigation by broadcast groups and newspaper owners, the FCC ultimately eliminated these rules. Changes in technology and the overall media landscape have made them unnecessary. On appeal, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the FCC’s relaxation but was subsequently overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2021.

Looking back, the emphasis on local markets seems misguided. Nothing was done to curtail the growth of media conglomerates across multiple markets. In addition, the FCC regulations never applied to cable or internet companies. These alternatives originally were called the “500-channel universe.”

Today, traditional cable industry giants such as Comcast Corp., Warner Media LLC, Cox Communications Inc., ViacomCBS Inc., Hearst Communications Inc., Fox Corp. and The Walt Disney Co. all have revenue in the billions. And they’re on track to be superseded by a host of on-demand, streaming competitors such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.

Meanwhile, local daily and weekly newspapers have become a vast wasteland.

According to a 2020 report by the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media, over 15 years the U.S. lost 2,100 daily and weekly newspapers — more than 25% — leaving 1,800 communities with no local news in print or online. From 2018 to 2020, 300 newspapers closed, 6,000 journalism jobs disappeared and local newspaper circulation declined by 5 million.

Anecdotally, we hear the loss of local business news has been even greater, as large media companies consolidate ownership of daily papers and cut coverage.

Alden Global Capital,* Lee Enterprises Inc. and McLean-based Gannett Co. Inc. collectively own more than one in six local newspapers in the U.S., with the lion’s share owned by Gannett.

This consolidation trend of media voices and ownership isn’t just happening in newspapers, though.

Nexstar Media Group Inc. and Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. each operate about 20% of the nation’s roughly 1,000 local television stations. Nexstar operates 199 stations in 116 U.S. markets, while Sinclair operates 185 television stations in 86 markets.

And none of these statistics include today’s largest purveyors of information, the so-called “technology companies” Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook/Instagram), Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc. (Google/YouTube). Meta alone has nearly 4 billion users per month via Facebook and Instagram and brought in almost $86 billion in 2020 revenue.

In the U.S., these companies have remained virtually unfettered by regulation.

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act grants these companies immunity for any third-party content published on their platforms, no matter how egregious.

Meanwhile, social media’s impact on civil discourse and democracy remains increasingly questionable.

Perhaps it’s by dumb luck, but at Virginia Business we’ve managed to remain fiscally and editorially healthy, both in print and online, despite — or perhaps because of — our lack of group ownership.

In any event, we are delighted to be here to serve your business information needs and grow with you in 2022.

Welcome to the new year and thank you for your support.