A federal judge ruled yesterday that AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Schering-Plough must pay damages for overcharging on certain drugs paid for by Medicare, pension funds, insurers and patients. ...
In a 183-page opinion, Judge Saris wrote: “The Medicare statute itself created a perverse incentive by pegging the nationwide reimbursement for billions of drug transactions a year to a price reported by the pharmaceutical industry, thus putting the proverbial pharmaceutical fox in charge of the reimbursement chicken coop. The different pharmaceutical companies unfairly took advantage of the system by setting sky-high prices with no relation to the marketplace.”
The judge found that AstraZeneca, which is based in London, acted “unfairly and deceptively” by causing the publication of false and inflated average wholesale prices for its prostate cancer drug Zoladex, which exceeded doctors’ acquisition costs by as much as 169 percent. ...
Do they still call themselves the "ethical drug" industry, or has "Big Pharma" taken over in name as well as practice? And on foxes and chicken coops, don't forget Congress and campaign finance...
A prescription drug may only be sold by a pharmacist when authorised by a written prescription from a medical practitioner. Ethical drug is a synonym for prescription drug that is often favoured by pharmaceutical companies despite being less widely understood.
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