Kickbacks Keeping Big Pharma Healthy?
David McNew/Getty Images
As members of Congress debate healthcare reform - most would agree to a crackdown on those who cheat the system. At least $68 billion is lost to health care fraud every year - and that's considered a conservative estimate.
CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian has more on a staggering fraud case involving health care giant Omnicare.
When it comes to selling drugs to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the country, Omnicare has a prescription for success - a market share in excess of 70 percent and more than $6 billion in sales last year alone.
60 Minutes: Medicare Fraud: A $60 Billion Crime
But that success, it appears, came with a strong dose of dishonesty: Today Omnicare agreed to pay nearly $100 million to settle a series of complaints with the Justice Department for paying and receiving kickbacks.
"We will not tolerate the payments of kickbacks that have an influence and affect the choice of drugs prescribed to patients in nursing homes," said Boston U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks.
According to the government, Omnicare allegedly "solicited and received" kickbacks from health care giant Johnson & Johnson in exchange for "agreeing to recommend that physicians prescribe" the company's anti-psychotic drug Risperdal.
And the government alleged Omnicare solicited and received $8 million in kickbacks from drug manufacturer IVAX in exchange for Omnicare's agreement to purchase $50 million in drugs from IVAX.
"Omnicare is a company that has a lot of ethical problems," said Patrick Burns of the group Taxpayers Against Fraud. "This is not the first it has been nailed for fraud by the U.S. government. It is a repeat player in the fraud game."
Omnicare allegedly also paid kickbacks, in one case shelling out $50 million to two nursing home chains in order to keep the chain's pharmacy business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
As is typical in these cases, Omnicare denied any wrongdoing. But the company was willing to swallow a nearly $100 million pill to make this headache go away.
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian has more on a staggering fraud case involving health care giant Omnicare.
When it comes to selling drugs to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the country, Omnicare has a prescription for success - a market share in excess of 70 percent and more than $6 billion in sales last year alone.
60 Minutes: Medicare Fraud: A $60 Billion Crime
But that success, it appears, came with a strong dose of dishonesty: Today Omnicare agreed to pay nearly $100 million to settle a series of complaints with the Justice Department for paying and receiving kickbacks.
"We will not tolerate the payments of kickbacks that have an influence and affect the choice of drugs prescribed to patients in nursing homes," said Boston U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks.
According to the government, Omnicare allegedly "solicited and received" kickbacks from health care giant Johnson & Johnson in exchange for "agreeing to recommend that physicians prescribe" the company's anti-psychotic drug Risperdal.
And the government alleged Omnicare solicited and received $8 million in kickbacks from drug manufacturer IVAX in exchange for Omnicare's agreement to purchase $50 million in drugs from IVAX.
"Omnicare is a company that has a lot of ethical problems," said Patrick Burns of the group Taxpayers Against Fraud. "This is not the first it has been nailed for fraud by the U.S. government. It is a repeat player in the fraud game."
Omnicare allegedly also paid kickbacks, in one case shelling out $50 million to two nursing home chains in order to keep the chain's pharmacy business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
As is typical in these cases, Omnicare denied any wrongdoing. But the company was willing to swallow a nearly $100 million pill to make this headache go away.
http://www.robertsfight.com
Once again, the neos reveal their contempt for their fellow man, and fall to their knees in worship of their god, a scrap of paper known as the dollar bill.
Maybe CBS might interview GOP opponents of health care reform, and ask each about their plans to end such clearly illegal collusion.
Let's get them on record as to what they will do about it, then hold them to their answers.
So why isn't J&J on the carpet for agreeing to and paying the kickbacks?
Really? What about the "invisible kickbacks" they get when they push the homes to institute smoking bans and then push the 70 and 80 year old smokers into regular regimes of the highly profitable NicoGummyPatchyProducts?
Think about it: a one cent piece of Chicolet style gum, with a half cent's worth of nicotine added, and they charge 25 or 50 cents apiece or thereabouts... and the patients are given the choice of chewing the gum (which we all pay for half the time in our taxes) or standing out in the far corner of a parking lot in the rain.
Think about what and who help push these bans and why they do it the next time you read a splashy news story about the "New And Even Deadlier Threat" discovered from the wisps of smoke that eternally surrounded the entire generation that's now the longest lived generation in the history of the world.
The "official" kickbacks Big Pharma gets are chicken feed in comparison.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"