It’s A Dessert Topping And A Floor Wax…
From the BBC, because you can’t expect the corporate media to say bad things about other corporations: Pfizer agrees record fraud fine
US drugmaker Pfizer has agreed to pay $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice.
A subsidiary pleaded guilty to misbranding drugs “with the intent to defraud or mislead”.
Pfizer illegally promoted four drugs and caused false claims to be submitted to government healthcare programmes for uses that were not medically accepted.
US officials said Pfizer would have to enter a corporate integrity agreement.
It will be subject to additional public scrutiny by requiring it to make “detailed disclosures” on its website.
…The civil settlement also relates to allegations that Pfizer paid bribes to healthcare providers to induce them to prescribe four named drugs. These are Bextra, an anti-inflammatory drug, Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug, Zyvox, an antibiotic and Lyrica, an epilepsy treatment.
The investigation was trigged by allegations made by six whistleblowers. They will receive $102m of the civil fines paid by Pfizer.
…
Pfizer reported a 90% drop in profit to $268m in the fourth quarter of 2008, because of the $2.3bn legal settlement, indicating that the company was aware they would be paying this sum before the terms of the deal with the Department of Justice were announced.
This “record fine” was written off as 90% of THE PROFIT for ONE QUARTER! This fine affected the profit for a single quarter, and the Justice Department thinks that’s going to prevent recurrence?
A “corporate integrity agreement”? Are they kidding? “Corporate” and “Integrity” are mutually exclusive concepts. “Detailed disclosures” on a website? Why don’t I think “fraud” and “criminal” will be a feature of these “disclosures”?
If they want to stop this from happening, start throwing people in prison, starting at the top.
5 comments
Yikes. I was on one of those meds for a while, probably for one of the nonlisted purposes. It didn’t work; my doc changed me to another drug. At least I didn’t contribute to Pfizer’s financial health for very long…
I’m not irreconcilably opposed to being a human subject if the manufacturer is at least truthful in its claims, so I can make my own decision. I just don’t like having a drug misrepresented for the benefit of stockholders. As you said… that should spell jail time, starting at the top of the corp.
If it is a drug trial, the drug should be free, and subject should be compensated. I don’t think that making people pay to be guinea pigs is right or reasonable.
Jail is my moderated position, I would actually prefer garroting then drawing and quartering, but we must move with the times.
The sad thing is that this is only one quarter of Pfizer’s profits. If they have to pay one quarter’s worth of their profits as a fine every ten years or so, they’re just gonna write it off as a cost of doing business and not change their behavior. People need to start going to jail for these things.
Similar illegal behavior: HCA, when a relative worked for them, had a policy of patient dumping. If an uninsured patient came into the ER, they would immediately bundle that patient into an ambulance again and rush him to the nearest public hospital, which was 50 miles away, regardless of whether the patient was stable and able to be moved yet. This is quite illegal of course, but HCA concluded that lawsuit settlements from payouts to the families of people who died during the dumping was cheaper than the cost of actually treating those people. This relative turned in HCA to state regulators for illegal patient dumping. The state regulators were wined and dined by HCA, and charged’em a token $200K fine and looked the other way when HCA (once again illegally) fired my whistle-blowing relative.
The whole system is corrupt from top to bottom, and in a fair or just world, we’d just wipe’em all off the map and go to a VA-style PHS. We do not, of course, live in a fair or just world. :(.
– Badtux the Health Care Penguin
corporate integrity… that would be keeping the corporation intact? 😈
Badtux, out local hospital is an HCA operation, and among its other profit-making ventures, it has the contract for people who have been committed to custody for psychiatric screening. The “inmates” keep walking away from the hospital. They don’t escape, because there is no attempt to keep them there.
This has resulted in multiple deaths as these people are specifically committed under Florida’s Baker Act as be adjudged to be “a threat to themselves or others”.
In one case, two police officers and the “patient” died in a shoot out because the “patient” got back to his house and gained access to his arsenal. The family had him committed because he was “talking crazy” and had all kinds of weapons in his house. They assumed they had at least a couple of days to gather up the weapons, but he walked away the same day he was taken to the hospital.
The hospital’s attorney is claiming that a state contract to hold psychiatric patients, and a circuit court order directing them to the hospital, doesn’t actually mean that the hospital can or should use “coercion” , like a locked door, to keep them there.
The hospital is being sued by the family of one of the dead officers for negligence, because “tort reform” would protect them if they sued for malpractice.
BTW, several HCA hospitals have this state contract, and they are all following the same procedure of allowing these people to walk away.
Corporations are only concerned with profits. If you can’t deny them of profits for a significant period they won’t change a thing. As you say, just the cost of doing business.
That’s about it, Hipparchia.