I just saw on in the news that immucor and J&J were being sued for price fixing in the blood reagents. Does anyone know anything about this?

With only two players in the BB reagent business, it's easy for a third party to call something unfair ...

I just assumed from what I read that it had to do with reagent price increases, but it could be something else. I have not heard much more, so I guess if anyone knows, enlighten me.

It seems there may be a class action lawsuit against these 2 companies for collusion regarding price increases. I know this first hand. Right now there is an investigation into these allegations to see if proceeding with the class action is feasible.

I had heard about some government inquiry, but had not kept up with this too much. As someone with first-hand info., you seem on top of this more than my 'watercooler' knowledge. I would like to know a bit more to see whether and how this affects us. Thx.

There is not a lawsuit - yet. Both companies, Ortho and Immucor, have both been asked for documentation dating to September 2000. The information I received came from Bloomberg.com. I believe the reason Immucor has been mentioned and not Ortho is because Immucor only does Blood Bank. Ortho Clinical does much more than BB. And the BB part of Ortho only makes up less than 3% of their annual sales. Immucor, of course, would be 100% of their sales. So, the fact that the Justice Department is looking into "possible violations of the fedral criminal antitrust laws in the blood bank reagents industry" and no one knows for sure the scope of things; labeling this as a lawsuit is very premature. Some people have said it may not be worth it......

That might explain the letter I recieved from Immucor talking about their strategy and investment in our Industry.

I see what you were saying about bloombergs.com, others have said it had to do with pricing by both companies, so I guess we'll see.

I can't believe the antitrust investigation case was closed. Someone must have been paid off!

Meanwhile, the prices of reagents keep doubling every year.

I work for a TENET hospital that uses the company Broadlane to negoiate price contracts for the whole corporation, plus other hospital chains. It doesn't appear that these negoiations do any good, since the prices doubled again.

Anti-A, Anti-B and Anti-D are now $68-69/bottle

5mL Anti-S is now $1029.53. That's $10 per drop!

This is just outright ridiculous. I don't see how they get away with it, and why the government doesn't do anything about it.

Obama, I thought you wanted to lower health care costs? My health insurance also just doubled!! (with half the benefits).

I can't believe the antitrust investigation case was closed. Someone must have been paid off!

Meanwhile, the prices of reagents keep doubling every year.

I work for a TENET hospital that uses the company Broadlane to negoiate price contracts for the whole corporation, plus other hospital chains. It doesn't appear that these negoiations do any good, since the prices doubled again.

Anti-A, Anti-B and Anti-D are now $68-69/bottle

5mL Anti-S is now $1029.53. That's $10 per drop!

This is just outright ridiculous. I don't see how they get away with it, and why the government doesn't do anything about it.

Obama, I thought you wanted to lower health care costs? My health insurance also just doubled!! (with half the benefits).

Ortho's competitor will be in the US in 2011, this will settle the prices. Competitors are healthy thing to have.

If we're lucky . . . if not, the competition will decide that maybe they can reap as much profit as the 2 incumbents.