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

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

accountable

 

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.