Testimony concludes Monday in Theranos Inc.’s $5bn lawsuit against insurance giant Aetna, which claims that Theranos’ $9-per-month blood testing service came with its $65-per-year policy without warning.
Holmes, Theranos’ CEO, has stressed that the company’s blood test results all came from the same Theranos laboratory in Oakland, California, without any testing on Aetna members. But on Thursday, a day after testifying that Theranos found no evidence of any “inherently suspect” behavior, Holmes offered an explanation of how Theranos’ lab got a big discount on its $99-per-month lab service after an investigation found that Theranos was using a dangerous liquid to extract vials of its own blood.
Theranos had bought a company called Labscope, which inspected Theranos’ 40 new, state-of-the-art labs for compliance violations. The company violated its contract with Theranos in several areas, including “unsafe and unsound conditions” at its Hayward lab in Northern California, said Debra Chapman, an attorney for Aetna.
Chapman also asked Holmes to address a letter Theranos sent to regulators in which the company said it bought Labscope in June 2016 in order to report Labscope’s findings to regulators. Holmes explained to jurors on Thursday that Theranos made the decision to buy the lab for three purposes: to ensure compliance with the FDA; to establish a process and protocol for labs to build interoperability; and to prove its own ability to tell the difference between generic and Theranos’ lab services.
Read more about the case, here.
— This article was provided to NBC Owned Television Stations by a member of the NBC News editorial staff.