Does our current healthcare system engender corruption in big pharma? A recent Forbes article says yes.
A Parade of Big Pharma Corruption
Here are some recent examples of big pharma’s bad behavior:
- The offices of Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Novartis in South Korea were raided under suspicion of giving illegal rebates to doctors. (February 2016)
- SciClone, a pharma company in California, settled a lawsuit for $12 million alleging that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (February 2016)
- London-based pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has recently gotten in trouble in three separate countries – Romania, China, and the UK. In the latter two cases, GSK tried to bribe other drug makers to keep their generics out of the market. (2014 – 2016)
There are also countless class action lawsuits pending against big pharma companies like Eli Lilly, and Boehringer Ingelheim.
Something Smells Fishy, Even If It’s Legal
While some big pharma companies are blatantly breaking the law, others are just finding legal loopholes that let them get away with unethical practices.
A case in point is the completely legal shenanigans that former pharma CEO Martin Shkreli indulged himself in last year. Shkreli’s company jacked up the price of a generic drug by 5,000% per pill. The outcry was restricted to ethical complaints since Shkreli’s predatory action violated no laws.
A System That Encourages Corruption
According to a professor at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics, the problem boils down to conflicts of interest for physicians. Since doctors diagnose, prescribe, and supply drugs to patients, they are in charge of both supply and demand. Patients wind up being at the mercy of these decisions because they have almost no alternatives for care.
Big Pharma’s Corrupt Habits
It’s also easy for big pharma companies to get away with corrupt activities since they have a wide array of cheats at their disposal – including gifts to doctors, lavish trips, and putting people whose job it is to advise government healthcare decisions on their payrolls.
Regulations and the compliance processes of pharma companies are full of gaps and loopholes. What’s worse, there’s little incentive for big pharma to change its tune since fixing its processes would likely cost more than the company might pay in fines and lawsuits. For now, it looks like we’re stuck with a new kind of mafia – and its name is big pharma.
For more about big pharma corruption, read our recent look at inflated prescription drug prices.
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