Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a nearly $34 million settlement with AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals on June 29, 2026, resolving claims that the pharmaceutical company engaged in an illegal kickback scheme to influence prescriptions paid for by Texas Medicaid.
Under the settlement, AstraZeneca will pay $33,998,000 to the state. The lawsuit alleged that AstraZeneca provided free nursing services and reimbursement support to prescribers and paid third parties to deploy nurses and other healthcare professionals to recommend AstraZeneca drugs to medical providers under the guise of non-branded counseling.
These inducements were designed to steer providers toward prescribing AstraZeneca’s drugs, with many of the resulting prescriptions covered by Medicaid. According to the Texas Attorney General’s office, the illegal inducements resulted in millions of dollars in claims to Texas Medicaid that were tainted by AstraZeneca’s scheme.
“I will not allow Big Pharma to misuse taxpayer dollars to put profit ahead of Texans’ health,” Paxton said in a statement. “My office will continue aggressively pursuing healthcare fraud to protect taxpayer dollars and the integrity of our healthcare system.”
The settlement marks the second major enforcement action against AstraZeneca by Paxton’s office. In 2018, the company agreed to pay $110 million to settle lawsuits alleging false and misleading marketing of its antipsychotic drug Seroquel and cholesterol-lowering statin Crestor in violation of the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act. At the time of that settlement, AstraZeneca was already operating under a 2010 federal corporate integrity agreement that prohibited the company from promoting those drugs for uses not approved by the FDA.
The 2026 settlement was filed under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act. Paxton’s office has recovered more than $1.8 billion for Texas taxpayers under that law since 2000, according to prior statements from the attorney general’s office. The settlement resolves claims that AstraZeneca violated the statute by providing improper inducements to healthcare providers.
Sources
- Texas Attorney General — Official press release announcing the $34 million AstraZeneca settlement on June 29, 2026, detailing the kickback scheme and settlement terms
- Bloomberg Law News — Reporting on the settlement announcement and the sealed case resolution
- Texas Attorney General (2018 archive) — Prior $110 million AstraZeneca settlement for off-label marketing of Seroquel and Crestor, with details on the federal corporate integrity agreement
