Nebraska joins $47 million settlement against QOL Medical

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Attorney General Mike Hilgers on Thursday announced that Nebraska joined in on a settlement against a drug manufacturer.

The settlement against QOL Medical resolves allegations that they tricked health care providers and a clinical laboratory to buy Sucraid in violation of several laws.

The manufacturer and its CEO, Frederick Cooper, agreed to pay $47 million to resolve those claims.

Nebraska is one of 17 states, along with the United States, to be included in this settlement. Nebraska’s share of the settlement is $20,564.65.

QOL sells medication for patients with rare diseases, and its principal product is Sucraid.

The company admitted that beginning in 2018, it distributed free breath test kits to health care providers, asking them to give these kits to patients with common gastrointestinal symptoms.

They claimed the breath test could “rule in or rule out” a rare genetic condition for which Sucraid is the only FDA-approved medication.

But that wasn’t true, according to the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office.

QOL then paid a clinical laboratory to analyze over 75,000 patients’ breath tests, at no cost to the health care providers or patients.

The company gave the results to its sales department, which then made Sucraid sales calls to health care providers whose patients had positive breath test results.

This resulted in the submission of false claims to Medicaid and other government health care programs, with QOL getting reimbursed by these programs for Sucraid.

A whistleblower lawsuit was originally filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.