Ripoff - Sandoz overcharged Medicaid by 60,000%... $600 for $1 pill

[bik0]

And they're not the only one - over $13B in overcharges in New York alone...

Sandoz Overcharged Medicaid by 60,000% in $13B Pricing Scam, Says Judge
By Jim Edwards | Jan 28, 2010

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Novartis (NVS)’ generics unit Sandoz overcharged Medicaid by 59,936 percent, according to a federal court ruling. That’s not a typo: The alleged fraudulent overcharge was nearly sixty-thousand percent more than it should have been, according to complicated federal regulations that govern drug price reimbursement. (That means if Sandoz charged $1 for a pill, it told the government it cost $600.

Novartis/Sandoz wasn’t the only drug company draining the taxpayer’s dime: Wyeth (now part of Pfizer (PFE)) overcharged by 17,421 percent and Mylan (MYL) overcharged by 33,641 percent, the ruling says. That overbilling came at a price, Judge Patti Saris (pictured) wrote:

Collectively, the New York Medicaid program paid in excess of $13 billion between 1997 and 2003 for the prescription drugs at issue in these lawsuits.

http://goo.gl/f0W6

[csziggy]

1. So when are the fraud charges going to be filed? n/t

[gratuitous]

4. And what sort of jail time could we be talking about for these persons?

And is it sufficient to jail just the CEO or everyone on the entire board of directors?

[csziggy]

6. Oh I was thinking of a whopping huge fine - maybe four times the amout they overcharged

We could be kind and let them provide drugs for that amount for free to Medicare and Medicaid. Of course, the doctors who participated also have to be punished - maybe community service for them. Let them treat for free people who cannot afford medical care.

This scam is part of the reason health care costs have sky rocketed over the last twenty years. The companies and people involved should be forced to fix the problem they created.

[bik0]

7. How about also firing the government bureaucrats who were in charge

of authorizing the inflated payments. There should be a system in place for oversight and auditing to prevent such scams. The drug companies will probably settle for pennies on the dollar.

[csziggy]

10. Those are the ones who should go to jail - for malfeasance

But don't let the drug companies and the doctors get off with a slap on the wrist.

[FiveGoodMen]

12. For an offense of this magnitude, I think China's approach is better than ours.

[chelsea0011]

2. I thought the problem with Medicare/ Medicaid was the government

[bik0]

5. The problem is both - the gov't should have caught it a lot sooner

and the there's a lot more fraud that the government doesn't know about.

The overcharges went on for 6 years - from 1997-2003. Why didn't the government catch it sooner?

If you were running a corporation with your own money at stake would you have been more careful checking over those invoices?

Do you think the drug companies could ripoff United Health or Aetna by the tune of $13B? Do you think they would have found it sooner?

[napi21]

3. Who puts together the gov. drug price reimbursement policy?

I KNOW the govt. does, but what dept? They should have someone from the drug ind. working for them who knows how much the cost of the diff. meds are and establish a policy of what % profit they plan on allowing the pharm to make. I worked for a vitamine mfg. for 14 years, and I can tell you withing a few cents, how much every vit. costs! Why don't they have someone from the drug ind. to do the same?

I know I've questioned why some drugs costs are so extraordinarily high. There are some ligitimate factors bessides ingredients, but IMO not enough to make the cost of A PILL to b hundreds of $$!

[bik0]

8. Drug Rep in $3B Procrit Case: "80% of My Sales Were Medicare Fraud"

More fraud...

By Jim Edwards | Aug 17, 2009


The whistleblower pharmaceutical sales reps in the Procrit case reinstated in a Massachussetts federal court claim that their careers at Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Biotech unit were based mostly on lies. Mark Duxbury and Dean McClennan, both former sales reps at J&J, claim that the bulk of their business selling Procrit to hospitals and clinics was conducting Medicare fraud.

Duxbury claims he sold $13 million of Procrit between 1992 through 1998, and that approximately 80 percent of those sales were “false or fraudulent claims for Medicare reimbursement.”

McClennan sold more than $65 million of Procrit, and about 50 percent of his sales were fraudulent Medicare claims, he alleges.

The case — which J&J denies — was revived by a Massachussetts federal appeals court last week. It contains the usual complaints: marketing the spread between the price reimbursed by Medicare and the lower price the company sold it at, and off-label marketing.

But it also names names. Dozens of them: Doctors, hospitals, and clinics. In each case it describes how the doctor or institution took advantage of J&J’s schemes to lower the price it sold Procrit to doctors at, while asking the government to reimburse at the higher “average wholesale price.”

The whistleblowers’ lawyer says Medicare was defrauded of $3 billion.

http://goo.gl/G326

[malaise]

9. These fuggign criminals

are getting away with murder literally and figuratively. And yes they are the said corporations who are against government while they steal the people's money. Time to lock up these fuckers.

[Cetacea]

11. k&r