DES MOINES -- Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is leaving nothing to chance in a bid to recover millions of dollars he claims drugmakers have swindled from the state's Medicaid program.

Miller announced Tuesday that he had charged a total of 78 companies with "unlawfully inflat[ing] drug costs paid by Iowa taxpayers" through Medicaid. He said the companies "deliberately inflate[d] the reported Average Wholesale Price" of their drugs to increase their reimbursement from Iowa Medicaid.

"We allege that Iowa has lost millions of dollars as a result of the practice," Miller said.

The AG's lawsuit claims Medicaid spent more than $1.6 billion on the defendants' products between 1992 and 2005 and that the reported price of their drug products "can exceed 100%, 200% or even more of the true price." Similar lawsuits in Texas have netted that state $55.1 million so far, Miller noted.

Most recently, "Big Pharma" drugmaker Aventis Behring LLC agreed to settle for $182.8 million a 50-state lawsuit against it for the pricing of its anti-nausea drug Anzemat, LNL reported. Aventis is also one of the drugmakers named in Miller's suit.

The attorney general's suit states the specific pricing examples of GlaxoSmithKline's Zantac and Pfizer's Alprazolam. Other Big Pharma defendants include Abbott, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Merck and Purdue Pharma.