More than $2.4 billion recovered in pharmaceutical fraud cases

• These cases represent many billions of dollars stolen from Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, the Indian Health Care Service, and the Federal Employee health care system.
• With Medicaid being cut to the bone across the nation, corporate greed is now having a very direct impact on human needs.
• The New York Times is running a multi-part series on fraud within New York state's Medicaid program (see>> New York Medicaid Fraud May Reach Into Billions) which notes that the State spends nearly twice the national average -- roughly $10,600 per patient -- on Medicaid, and that Federal audits have uncovered more than $1.2 billion misspent on speech programs alone.
• Abbott Labs: Fraud Feasor of the Week The story of Abbott Labs, featured below, suggests the scope, scale and nature of Medicare and Medicaid prescription drug frauds perpetrated by this company in the past.
• In October 2001, TAP Pharmaceuticals, a joint operation of Abbott Labs and Takeda Pharmaceuticals, agreed to pay $875 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities in connection with fraudulent pricing and marketing of the cancer drug Lupron.
• On January 3, 2003 a California False Claims Act case against Abbott came out from under seal charging the company with systematically defrauding California's Medicaid program by inflating prices for various drugs in order to "market the spread" -- a common business plan fraud in which drug companies report an entirely fictitious "Average Wholesale Price" to Medicaid while selling the drugs at deep discounts to WalMart, CVS, Walgreens and other national chains in order to capture market share.
• A Brief History of "The Lincoln Law" The False Claims Act is a near-perfect public-private partnership that has returned over $14 billion stolen from the American people.