Huntington offers new services

Huntington offers new services

COLUMBUS

Huntington Bank’s Private Client Group introduced a new interest-bearing checking account featuring the bank’s best checking rates and a superior level of benefits.

The Private Client Account provides a comprehensive suite of deposit services, including unlimited non-Huntington ATM fee refunds for cash withdrawals both domestic and international, no overdraft fees, no stop-payment fees and no check-order fees. Other deposit services, such as incoming wire transfers and foreign-currency processing are provided for no additional charge.

Brown praised for currency-act support

WASHINGTON

The Alliance for American Manufacturing praised U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, Jeff Sessions III, R-Ala., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Debbie Stabenow D-Mich., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., for their co-sponsorship of the Currency Undervaluation Investigation Act.

AAM supports immediate passage of the bill, which would allow for undervalued currency to be treated as an actionable subsidy under U.S. trade law.

Rite-Aid pays $2B for benefits manager

Rite Aid’s $2 billion acquisition of a pharmacy-benefits manager steers the drugstore chain toward a potentially lucrative focus for health care companies: finding ways to tame customer costs.

The nation’s third-largest drugstore chain is buying EnvisionRx which, like all pharmacy-benefits managers, can exercise considerable influence over how much patients pay for their medications.

So-called PBMs run prescription-drug plans for customers that include employers and insurers. They negotiate prices with drugmakers, process mail-order prescriptions and try to keep tabs on whether patients are taking their medicines, all in an attempt to keep costs down for their customers.

AstraZeneca to pay $7.9 million over kickback allegations

DOVER, Del.

Pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca LP will pay $7.9 million to settle allegations that it engaged in a kickback scheme involving the heartburn medicine Nexium, U.S. Justice Department officials said Wednesday.

The settlement stems from a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2010 on behalf of the government by two former AstraZeneca executives. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Delaware, home to AstraZeneca’s U.S. commercial headquarters, had remained sealed until this week.

The lawsuit alleged that top AstraZeneca executives led a scheme to give $100 million in price concessions on Nexium to the company’s largest commercial purchaser, pharmacy- benefits manager Medco Health Solutions, in return for preferred placement of Nexium on Medco’s list of approved medications and Medco’s promotion and direct purchase of the drug.

Staff/wire reports