AbbVie sues US Health Department over Botox price controls

Feb 11 (Reuters) - AbbVie ABBV.N sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, challenging a decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to impose price controls for Botox.

In a complaint filed in the Washington, D.C., federal court, AbbVie said Congress expressly excluded various medications covered under Medicare from price controls when that body passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The drugmaker called its lawsuit the first arising from CMS' allegedly violating one of those exclusions, specifically the exclusion of "plasma-derived products" from price controls.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit also names CMS and its administrator, Mehmet Oz, as defendants.