AbbVie is facing a new class action over Humira, its popular arthritis medication, with lawyers calling the situation “a poster child for excessive and anticompetitive pricing.”
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, with offices in Seattle, Chicago and Cambridge, Mass., filed the lawsuit April 25 in federal court in Chicago on behalf of named plaintiff Edward Camargo. Also involved are attorneys from the firm of Carella Byrne Cecchi Brody Agnello, of Roseland, N.J.
Camargo, an Indiana resident, said he took Humira as a prescription drug from roughly 2013 to 2018 to treat psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis. When he turned 26, and he was forced from his father’s insurance policy, he said was unable to find an insurer willing to cover the drug and couldn’t pay the price charged to uninsured or cash paying customers.
“He suffered the worst pain he had ever felt when he stopped taking Humira,” according to the complaint. “The pain was far worse than any pain he had experienced before he started taking Humira. Before Humira he had some pain and scaling on his scalp only. After he stopped taking Humira, he had scaling on his scalp, knees, abdomen, back of arms, forehead, and private area. The scales were itchy and extremely dry. When he itched the scales, they would get itchier and start bleeding. It was also painful to touch them because the skin was fragile. His skin would crack and bleed, and no amount of moisture would help.”
According to the complaint, Humira is “the largest selling prescription drug in the world” and the subject of a January 2020 Washington Post article titled “Why Price of Humira Keeps Rising Despite FDA Approval of Generic Competition.” That report said Humira’s price increases “defied gravity” and, at the time, cost more than $72,000 per year.
Camargo said he ultimately obtained Otzela through his new insurance provider, but alleged that drug “did not work at all.” He said he now takes Tremfya, paying $5 per month, and although it does alleviate some symptoms it doesn’t perform “nearly as well as Humira.”
The complaint accused AbbVie of consistently increasing the published price of Humira while not disclosing the net prices it charges to pharmacy benefit managers.
“PBMs distribute drugs to pharmacies, and then pocket a portion of the difference between publicly listed prices and the private net price they pay for a drug,” Hagens Berman said in a release regarding the litigation. “The larger that spread between prices, the more PBMs profit, and the lawsuit alleges that AbbVie exploited this covert arrangement to charge consumers outrageously high prices for Humira.”
In addition to Camargo’s personal experience, the lengthy complaint refers to a congressional investigation that indicated AbbVie has increased Humira’s published price 27 times since introducing the drug, calculated at a 470% increase over the 2003 price. The complaint pegged Humira’s worth to AbbVie at $121 billion from 2009 to 2018 in worldwide net revenue and $16 billion just in 2020. It further alleged the company directly linked senior executive bonuses to Humira’s revenue figures and said executives told Congress the cost of making the drug, from 2009 to 2018, equated to 11% of revenues from the same period.
Camargo alleged class members had no way of knowing about the pricing scheme because AbbVie labeled Humira net prices a trade secret, and therefore argued for tolling any statutory limitations AbbVie might invoke to limit liability if found guilty. The complaint also cited several published reports of people similarly situated with regards to their symptoms returning or worsening after being unable to afford to continue taking Humira.
The complaint brings 32 individual counts alleging violations of various state consumer fraud and unfair trade practice laws. In addition to class certification and a jury trial, the complaint seeks class and punitive damages, compensation for litigation expenses and a court order stopping “AbbVie from continuing to report artificially inflated list prices that do not approximate its true net prices.”