Drug lords

It's been a little bit since Guambat had a pharma spew. The bad news was so persistent it just became overwhelmingly routine, a numbing routine.

Still is.

Marketing fraud cases against pharmaceutical companies have become almost routine, with almost every major drug maker being accused of giving kickbacks to doctors or shortchanging the Medicaid program on prices. Prosecutors said that they have become so alarmed by the growing criminality in the industry that they have begun increasing fines into the billions of dollars and will soon start charging doctors individually as well.

Pfizer Pays $2.3 Billion to Settle Marketing Case


Document Details Plan to Promote Costly Drug

The document, “Lexapro Fiscal 2004 Marketing Plan,” is an outline of the many steps Forest used to make Lexapro a success. Because of concerns from Forest, the Senate committee released only 88 pages of the document, which may have originally run longer than 270 pages. “Confidential” is stamped on every page.

But those 88 pages make clear that one of the principal means by which Forest hoped to persuade psychiatrists, primary care doctors and other medical specialists to prescribe Lexapro was by finding many ways to put money into doctors’ pockets and food into their mouths.