Drug companies engage in massive health care fraud, but are never held accountable

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Drug companies engage in massive health care fraud, but are never held

accountable

http://www.newstarget.com/001867.html

 

U.S. pharmaceutical companies are finding clever ways to avoid the

consequences of a 1996 law that mandates their exclusion from federal

health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid if they are convicted

of felony health care fraud. According to news reports, since 2001 at

least four major drug companies have been convicted of felony health

care fraud but have been able to avoid the penalty of being banned from

government health programs by constructing creative settlements with

prosecutors.

 

In one case, a guilty plea was offered by an inactive subsidiary of a

major pharmaceutical company that has no employees and sells no

products. Even though this subsidiary pleaded guilty, and it alone

cannot sell products to Medicare and Medicaid, it never sold any

products in the first place, and its parent company is free to continue

selling products to the federal government without any real consequence.

Another company, Pfizer's Warner-Lambert division, agreed to $430

million in fines due to its alleged fraudulent marketing of the drug

Neurontin.

 

The company claimed that it was illegally marketing that drug only

through August 20, 1996. The new law kicked in on August 21, 1996, and

that's the day Pfizer claimed it stopped illegally marketing the drug.

 

The bottom line is that these pharmaceutical companies are structuring

their fraud settlements with the federal government in order to avoid

exclusion from federal health care programs. It's not that the law has

taught them to stop committing fraud -- it's just that the law has

forced them to get more creative in finding ways to simultaneously

commit fraud while continuing to sell products.

 

So what does all of this mean? It means that the pharmaceutical industry

is engaged in business as usual. They will go after profits using any

means necessary, including fraud, criminal activities, deceit, lying to

the public, hiding information from the FDA, bribing doctors, and so on.

Regrettably, there are no consequences for these actions -- it's as if

the entire nation has given the pharmaceutical industry an unlimited

stack of " get out of jail free " cards and told them they could engage in

any practices no matter how criminal or unethical, as long as they keep

making money.

 

Part of the problem here, of course, is that many U.S. citizens remain

invested in pharmaceutical companies. Virtually every mutual fund has

some stock in at least one pharmaceutical company, and people seem to be

quite pleased with the idea that they're making money, regardless of how

many other people are being killed by pharmaceuticals or harmed by their

dangerous side effects. People don't seem to have the capacity to look

in the mirror and say, " Yes, today I may be $10 richer due to my stock

ownership, but I'm also sicker because I'm on antidepressant drugs, and

I'm on statin drugs that are making my muscles hurt and are giving me

brain fog, and I'm on all sorts of other toxic drugs that are altering

my body chemistry, reducing my lifespan, and worsening the quality of

life I experience on a daily basis. "

 

But this is a choice that American consumers have to make on their own.

Yes, you can make money by being invested in a company that sells

extremely profitable, ridiculously priced products to the public, even

when those products cause untold harm, but as a whole, we are not better

off, and until we start holding pharmaceutical companies accountable for

the death and destruction they are causing, and until we stop being so

greedy that we will look the other way as long as we're making a buck,

then this situation will not change.

 

Related Reading:

 

The government has yet to use its power to bar major drug companies that

commit fraud from doing business with federal programs such as Medicaid

and Medicare. A 1996 law mandates exclusion from federal health care

programs for those who plead guilty to, or are convicted of, felony

health care fraud after Aug. 21, 1996. But since 2001, at least four

major drug companies, including two recently, avoided that penalty under

settlements with prosecutors.

 

The guilty plea was entered by an inactive Schering-Plough sales

subsidiary with no employees where the fraud occurred. · In May,

Pfizer's Warner-Lambert division agreed to $430 million in fines and

pleaded guilty to illegally marketing the drug Neurontin " through at

least August 20, 1996 " --- one day shy of the law's trigger date for

mandatory exclusion. Prosecutors alleged the misconduct occurred later,

too. " The settlements are structured very carefully to avoid mandatory

exclusion, " says John Bentivoglio, a former Justice Department lawyer

who represents health care companies. " We cannot exclude them, we're

dependent on them, " says Timothy Jost, health law professor at

Washington and Lee University.

 

He says big fines might be a better way to punish wrongdoing. The 2003

settlement of medical device maker Abbott Laboratories shows how

creative settlements can be. Abbott, as did the other companies, denied

the civil charges in its fraud case. " At some point, they're going to

have to pull the trigger to show they'll do it, " says Patrick Burns of

Taxpayers Against Fraud.

 

Source:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-08-15-pleas_x.htm

 

 

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health care to all Americans is socialism. " -- anon