Biovail Paid Cash to Doctors Who Prescribed Blood Pressure Drug
September 15th, 2009Via: CBC:
A subsidiary of Toronto-based drug maker Biovail Corp. will pay nearly $25 million US in fines after pleading guilty to encouraging doctors to prescribe their blood pressure drug by paying them cash on the side.
The Boston office of the U.S. attorney announced Monday that Bridgewater, N.J.-based Biovail Pharmaceuticals Inc. was sentenced to pay $22,243,590 after pleading guilty to conspiracy and kickback charges.
Prosecutors alleged Biovail paid thousands of physicians, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants and others up to $1,000 apiece to induce them to prescribe or recommend Biovail’s drug Cardizem to patients, including prescriptions that were paid for by Medicaid.
“These payments exceeded the reasonable fair market value of the medical prescribers’ time necessary to enrol these patients,” the office said in a release.
“Such attempts not only drive up health-care costs, they deprive patients of the untainted medical decision-making and trust they deserve,” acting United States Attorney Michael K. Loucks said.
Biovail had previously announced it had agreed to plead guilty and pay to settle the case in May 2008.
The company must also pay a $2,404,286 civil penalty to settle the matter.
Don’t know how I missed this yesterday- long ago and far away in what seems another lifetime- when I only used to visit Mom every once in awhile, I arrived to find Mom puking her guts out.
She had just been prescribed Cardizem.
There has until this day, been nothing wrong with my mother’s heart. Still beating strong at 92.I think often and hard at what I didn’t know about my Mom and what doctors were telling her to take. I just didn’t pay attention at that time. I had full faith in what I now think is a criminal medical-pharma mafia. And this article only gives creedance to my thinking that this whole blood pressure, cholestrol reducing, sheebang of treatment the drug industry has got going for it is going to fall.
This $2.4 civil penalty is a pittance -like it should have about 3 zeroes to it to make it 2.4 billion. What a sham. What a shame.