No matter how many lawsuits against Big Pharma we’ve seen in recent years, there doesn’t seem to be any end to them in sight. Ely Lilly, the biggest maker and pusher of psychiatric drugs, is currently under the gun from health insurers alleging massive overpayments due to the company’s illegal marketing practices.
Over the past month or two, Bloomberg News has been pretty much scooping everyone else on the grisly details surrounding the gigantic overpayment lawsuit filed by health insurers against Ely Lilly, for its unethical marketing practices of its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.
The insurers contend that Lilly should pay as much as $6.8 billion in damages for downplaying Zyprexa’s health risks, and for illegally marketing it off-label to increase profits.
So far, about 10,000 pages of internal Lilly documents have been unsealed as part of the suit, and Bloomberg’s reporters have been sifting through them in great detail.
Bloomberg has found documents fully supporting the charge that Lilly brazenly and illegally marketed its antipsychotic Zyprexa off-label for dementia, knowing full well that the drug did nothing to help the condition, and in fact was actually killing elderly patients.
Lilly has already settled with the feds and more than 30 states, pleading guilty to a criminal misdemeanor in January, over the off-label marketing of Zyprexa for use in the elderly. But these new documents remove any vestige of doubt that the company was culpable.
The documents also reveal that a subsidiary of CVS Caremark Corp., the largest U.S. drug-store chain, used its extensive access to health care providers to market Zyprexa directly to mental health prescribers — and was paid for that by Lilly — all while simultaneously under contract to bargain with Lilly on behalf of health insurers.
That’s really got the health insurers up in arms.
In an April 30 filing, Lilly said it had settled suits involving about 32,670 individual claimants alleging damages from Zyprexa, including serious weight gain and diabetes. Some 140 claims are still unsettled, but Lilly has already paid out about $1.2 billion for the individual settlements.
Whether all the suits in recent years brought against Big Pharma by patients alleging damage, by irate insurers alleging overpayment, or by state and federal governments alleging both overpayment and various civil and criminal misconducts, the suits reveal that almost all the time the charges were well-founded.
And now, along with Big Pharma, we can no longer trust our corner drug stores. Our friendly pharmacist is now involved, however indirectly, in the endless litany of crimes against humanity that have permanently sullied Big Pharma’s reputation.
There are two things we must keep in mind if we are ever going to see real changes.
First, Big Pharma’s callous disregard for patient welfare, placing profit ahead of all else, is endemic in the industry. This fact should be trumpeted long and loud.
Second, people were killed outright by Zyprexa. The same is true for many other drugs from numerous drugmakers. Yet Lilly pleaded guilty to a “criminal misdemeanor”, and no drugmaker has spent a single day in prison for murder or manslaughter.
The problem is this: If a drug company is found guilty of a felony, the law states that they can’t do business with the federal government — so the enormous Medicare and Medicaid market is lost, meaning they are essentially out of business. However, if all Big Pharma has to do is pay a fine when they’re caught, like Purdue Pharma was over the OxyContin debacle, then it becomes just a “cost of doing business.”
But slaps on the wrist will never bring about the reform in Big Pharma that is so urgently needed. For a serious discussion of the thorny situation surrounding Big Pharma crimes, and specifically OxyContin and the FDA, please read Different Justice For A Drug Dealer, by Novus Detox director Steven Hayes.
