Six former executives and managers from Arizona-based drugmaker, Insys Therapeutics, face conspiracy charges over what a federal prosecutor calls a "racketeering crime." In this case, according to the indictment, the former employees of the drug manufacturer are alleged to have rewarded doctors for prescribing their spray version of the opiate fentanyl, even when it wasn't medically appropriate.
[...] Three years ago on CNBC, Michael Babich demonstrated the company's drug, "Subsys," a prescription pain reliever for cancer patients which is delivered through a spray. The medication, which the company first sold in 2012, racked up $329 milllion in sales last year. "The device that I brought with me today allows the patient to simply with no priming spray the drug underneath their tongue," Babich explained.
According to the indictment, the defendants "conspired with one another to use bribes and kickbacks" for doctors who "wrote large numbers of... prescriptions, most often for patients who did not have cancer." The scheme allegedly funneled tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to practitioners, including one whom a sales representative boasted in an email was running "a very shady pill mill and only accepts cash."
Source: CBS News
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @04:59AM
accountability isn't nearly strict enough
There is a lot of political pressure against government regulation of medical decisions and free speech (about drugs). The pressure comes from all sides: pharmaceutical lobbiests, professional medical societies, small government proponents, left-wing anti vaccine people, right wing anti STD-vaccine people, "right to try" people, and all the people that fall for the "ask your doctor about [drug we're trying to convince you to take]".
If we can't even get rid of direct-to-patient prescription drug advertising, then how are we going to limit "informational seminars" in Hawaii or invited speeches at conferences in Paris to discuss successful "case studies"?