DOJ: Billionaire Pharma Owner Fueled the Opioid Epidemic with Bribery Scheme
October 29th, 2017Via: Ars Technica:
The billionaire founder and majority owner of Insys Therapeutics was arrested Thursday on racketeering and fraud charges for an alleged nationwide scheme to push an extremely potent opioid drug containing fentanyl onto patients.
According to the Department of Justice, John Kapoor, 74, of Phoenix, Arizona, used bribes, kickbacks, and other fraudulent practices to get doctors to overprescribe the fentanyl drug, called Subsys. Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine. As such, Subsys is only intended to treat severe pain in cancer patients. But according to the DOJ, many patients receiving Subsys didn’t have cancer.
The DOJ alleges that Kapoor, along with six former executives at Insys, paid doctors and pain clinics in various states to write “large numbers of prescriptions.” The department also alleges that Insys used fraudulent means to get health insurance providers to cover the harmful prescriptions.
This so-called “Opioid Epidemic” is propaganda campaign aimed at raising the price of pain killers/making harder to get. My wife and I do NOT see where it is anywhere close to being easy to get opioids. Hydrocodone is a life saver for my wife who, without them, would be very debilitated from her back pain. The government has made it increasingly difficult to get these: have to go see the doctor every 3 months to get written prescriptions for each specific month, whereas before the doctor could just call the pharmacy to refill every month. Also now the prescription has to be filled by pharmacy no later than the day after it was written for. This “Opioid Epidemic BS” is very scary to hear for people who have a real need for pain killers, because it will raise the price and make them even harder to obtain. (Damn Gubments!!)