I really take issue with "settlements" of such a scale that don't equate to an admission of guilt. It's essentially buying a get of jail free card. If any individual were facing criminal charges, they would have to plea guilty before any easy-way-out is considered.
If it would have taken a billion dollars in legal fees to prove your innocence, I'm going to take a chance and suggest that these claims likely weren't "false".
There's no such thing as guilt in a civil suit though - even if it goes to trial there is no guilt or non-guilt verdict, there's just a balance of evidence. There's still no admission or presumption of guilt at the end of a trial.
You're correct, I should have been more clear in my comparison to individuals facing criminal charges. I am critiquing that they get to squash this matter in such a way before the preponderance of evidence can occur to bring proper charges against them, which likely would have occurred if the lawsuit had been allowed to play out. Almost certainly, this settlement will come with some binding arbitration towards the accusants.
What's more, these "headline" settlement numbers usually go before a judge and get knocked down to 10-30% of what they originally were. The new (final) settlement number rarely makes the headlines
That's only for jury cases where the jury approves some huge number presented by the prosecutor. In this case, Biogen has agreed to pay the sum, as noted in the article.
Our beloved former mayor has a cameo in the movie. Hopefully he used it as leverage to allow them to film in City Hall. He's seen in the court, holding the bible up to a person being sworn in. The first time I saw it I cackled. I do miss that Nutter.
Right?! The law & economics people have a good analytical framework, but by looking at everything in abstract economic terms it arguably makes corruption fungible.
$30 billion fine, that's appropriate. Dude get the pricing right, government should get valuators for this, it's not a percentage of the profits, it's double or treble the damages.
According to the article, it occured between 2009 and 2014. Not sure exactly how much profit they made off of it and it's probably not easy to find out, but of the three drugs they marketed in unlawful ways, Tysabri for instance had US sales of $58m in the 08-09 year. And that's sales not pure profit after costs.
Ask and ye shall receive: Biogen annual net income for the year ending...
2010-June-30: $1094M
2011-June-30: $1076M
2012-June-30: $1342M
2013-June-30: $1608M
2014-June-30: $2140M
2015-June-30: $3490M
Also, because someone asked, edgar has a bar chart breakdown of Biogen's product revenue. The lawsuit was about Biogen's drugs Avonex, Tysabri and Tecfidera. The bar chart (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/875045/0000875045150...) seems to indicate that these three were responsible for about 80-83% of Biogen's revenues (and presumably net income?) in 2014.
I guess what we don't know is what their sales would have been like without the kickbacks? Less, presumably? But 0? Probably not.
If found guilty, you can be banned from doing any business with Medicare and Medicaid in the US - that’s already a part of the law and it’s the same as losing 50% of your revenue in perpetuity.
But it’s never used. Well, they used it on Pfizer, but the agreement was the ban was for a shell company they owned that didn’t actually sell any drugs. A sacrificial lamb if you will.
“A Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia and Upjohn Inc., which was acquired in 2003, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of felony misbranding.”
That actually might be an interesting deterrent worth pursuing. The President and perhaps Secretary of Commerce could probably tell the US Patent Office what to do, such as invalidate a patent. Although the constitution grants these discretionary monopolies, it doesn't stipulate how, with patents being a coincidence by Congress to fulfill that and the "limited time" aspect of that article of the constitution is already fulfilled.
Everything is an expense no matter what. Even if you were to have prison time or capital punishment, that is just an expense to someone else. E.g. How much for a fall guy
So in fact, when a corporation does something disgustingly criminal, like Abbott did to me twice, with Depakote and Clozapine, second time I was wise to their shit, dodged their shit, they sell shit, they're shit salesmen. Door to door. Knock knock who's there? A shit salesman. A shit salesman who? Abbott, we're doing another round poisoning you in a way that we know is wrong but will not be provable for 8 years, you want this? You have to swallow every single time if you consent! And by the way, you can't get eat enough to not lose weight (at a waist size 32) until you consent, we'll ask you 70 times, and if not you're on the street! Remember, always swallow because we have a swallowing fetish. So legally you're always allowed to dodge, the swallowing fetish is because it's an experiment on dosing 100% of a group, in this case a rehab, diametrically against their will and obviously against their interest. It's a "fuck the Law" context. A preparation for rehab, see what the objections were and how to overcome them. I said fetish for swallowing, that's literally what it is. They aren't legally allowed any any of the shit they do, at Clinica Rayencura, like dude saw them bribing police, whatever the fuck. Police hanging out, getting bribed, just hanging out, because they chased "fugitives" who escaped, which is also totally legal, and captured them, and sent them to a weird clinic and injected them with...with whatever. At a certain point, you gotta accept you'll get dosed and the purity of your blood is in GOD's hands, or some shit, I don't know. So these shrinks in fact stop GOD from getting into their wards, only prison with no Bibles, you can't go to mass on Sunday or even think of doing so, what else...no they let you pray, they don't fuck with that...what else...dude check your mouth and ask you to stick out your tongue to prove you swallowed, that says it all. And that pill, clozapine, diminished thought, made time go by faster, starved the brain to feed the body fat, people's weight doubled on that shit, disgusting. Automatic obesity. But there was consent! Signature, you consented to this once, that's what you have to swallow every night!
So obviously if Abbott tries to poison me again, like I'm going to read the brand name, dude get real, woafs (wastes of a fuck) will poison you until they get shut down...or until they get told "your company is imprisoned, all your staff have to work out of a prison every day under surveillance, cavity search daily, no quitting no hiring, it's forced labor like ordinary prison, you go home at night, that's what you get, anybody who didn't denounce it". The real corporate jail penalty.
Only survivor in the rehab. Only one who didn't gain 40 pounds. The alpha.
EDIT: downvotes are upvotes. So what I say sounds like paranoid or whatever but yeah duh that's how I didn't get fat. Only the paranoid survive? Only the paranoid stay skinny.
I've always wondered if anti-psychotics were worth it for the populations taking them. Seems like a shitty choice -- dull/blunt the mind with questionable near-poison or experience the full 'richness' of a mind that society finds maladaptive.
I've never been in a position to be recommended or asked to take such drugs, but from my study of them I'm pretty sure I'd personally have probably chosen to risk dealing with reality on its own terms. Certainly a difficult choice.
The interesting thing is that what they did wouldn’t even be a crime if the doctors they paid didn’t work with Medicare patients. The anti kickback statute only applies to government funded health insurance programs. These same laws are also why manufacturers can’t offer copay assistance programs to people on Medicare. Applying these laws everywhere could probably reduce waste dramatically.
Also there’s a very high ROI and not very often discussed career path: Work in sales at big pharma company or home health care company or really any compare that bills Medicare, find False Claim Act violations and a lawyer to represent you, and collect 15-30% of settlement (should be 8 to 9 figures if you played your cards right).
It would be great if it was possible to make it easier to assess unscrupulous behaviour by medical professionals and to weed out bad actors whilst simultaneously screening out damaging but unjustified claims about them made by patients or detractors with an axe to grind.
I do have concerns about how easy it is for some specialists to create a gravy train for themselves by simply requiring regular 'assessment' visits for patients under their care or observation at what seems to be a ludicrous rate for five minutes of their time.
In the UK there is an ombudsman that people can report their concerns to, but what then? - How anonymous is the patient really and how significantly do they compromise their relationship with what is actually a small pool of people who all know each other and are subject to the pressures of their professional clique's members?
How can this be improved, because even if they are sure that they are being overcharged and poorly treated there is still an incentive for patients not to go up against the medical establishment?
Pricing transparency is one thing which can help, but if there is a departure from the 'expected' level, then what? Is the right thing to do simply for the patient to always assess the rate vs service and report anything which is an outlier without concern for potential downstream consequences from their specialists? Or does pragmatism prevail, even if it perpetuates poor behaviour by the medical professionals?
That’s an epic reward, even if a large portion goes to legal help. How are there not more whistle blowers in big pharma? Granted, it was 7 years of hard work, but payoff is crazy.
If it would have taken a billion dollars in legal fees to prove your innocence, I'm going to take a chance and suggest that these claims likely weren't "false".