Kentucky To Receive $2 Million In Drug Marketing Settlement

Kentucky will receive a share of a 75 million dollar settlement in a lawsuit over drug marketing. The commonwealth is among several states to settle with Johnson & Johnson over how the Topamax drug was marketed to doctors.Topamax is an epilepsy prescription, but the states say it was marketed to health care providers as a treatment for other psychological conditions.Kentucky will receive about two million dollars in the settlement, six hundred thousand of which will be put into the state Medicaid program. The rest will go to the federal Medicaid program. Attorney General's spokesperson Allison Martin says no money from the settlement will go to individuals who purchased the drug."The fraud is on the Medicaid program," she says. "That is the allegation that this office would take on, because…it's a systematic issue of marketing. It's not on the level or per consumer, it's a systematic marketing of this drug to physicians and health care providers."Martin says Kentucky's share is about twice what Medicaid spent on Topamax. The extra money represents additional damages.