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Pharmaceuticals
Since 1997. Americans' trust in the pharmaceutical industries has gone down by 13%, and with good reason. Spending more money on courting physicians and financing aggressive marketing campaigns than on research and development, as well as engaging in unethical (and often illegal) activities has earned this industry growing contempt. Today, more than any other time in history, Americans are being over-prescribed or wrongly prescribed certain drugs because of the actions of "Big Pharma."
AstraZeneca
Drug giant AstraZeneca is being
investigated again for corporate malfeasance, this time by the
European Union. The EU alleges that the pharmaceutical company
lied to EU member states to get extra patent protection for its
blockbuster drug, Losec. This is only a few months after the
company was forced to pay the 2nd largest fine in the history of
the pharmaceutical industry ($350 million) for conspiring with
doctors to over-prescribe the drug Zolodex and ripping off the
Medicare system.
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GlaxoSmithKline & Bayer
Pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer were forced to
pay out over $340 million to the government for engaging in
"lick and stick" fraud. Under federal law, pharmaceutical
companies must issue rebates to the Medicaid program if the
companies sold their drugs at higher prices than to other
buyers. The companies were accused of re-labeling drugs in order
to avoid paying out the rebates.
Read the US DOJ press release on the companies' Medicaid fraud
Bayer and GalxoSmithKline settle
Medicaid fraud allegation for $344 million
News
13 Pharmaceutical companies are being sued by
Massachusetts for inflating the cost of drugs purchased by the
state Medicaid system by over $50 million.
The pharmaceutical industry's D.C.
lobbying group, PhRMA is set to spend a massive amount of money
this year in order to buy as much influence in government as
possible.
The largest Medicare fine in history
was paid out by TAP Pharmaceuticals for fraudulent drug pricing
and marketing procedures of its drug Lupron, which was to treat
men with advanced stage prostate cancer