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

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 commentary:

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.