The Boston Globe reports:
"Bristol-Myers Squibb and a subsidiary have agreed to pay more than $515 million to settle civil suits over fraudulent drug marketing and pricing schemes, including illegally promoting an anti-psychotic drug to children and the elderly, US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan said yesterday. ...The agreement says Bristol-Myers Squibb gave kickbacks to physicians and healthcare providers from 2000 through mid-2003 to get them to prescribe the company's drugs. The kickbacks came in several forms, including consulting fees and trips to luxury resorts.
"Patients are entitled to unbiased decision-making from their physicians and should not have to worry that financial inducements or lavish entertainment have influenced their physicians' prescribing choices," Sullivan said. ...
Bristol-Myers Squibb participated in pricing schemes, including one involving its anti-depressant drug Serzone, that defrauded the Medicaid program, prosecutors said.
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Apothecon also inflated prices for a wide assortment of cancer-fighting and generic drugs, deceiving federal healthcare programs that established reimbursement rates based on those prices, prosecutors said. ...
Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and outspoken critic of drug companies, is skeptical.
"A lot of these companies, when they get sued for a few million dollars, they just consider it loose change," he said. "I haven't seen any let-up in what they're doing. Most of the time, when they're caught, they'll often say, 'It was a renegade, someone who wasn't following the instructions. Our policy says we shouldn't do that.' "
What needs to happen is that the drug companies, and large corporations in general in the United States, need to be directly held accountable for their actions to the government. With no threat of anything happening, they have no incentive to change.
Posted by: Okinawa at September 29, 2007 08:42 PM