Demonstrating yet again that pharmaceutical companies will do anything to make a buck, six such companies are under fire by the Florida Attorney General who has issued civil subpoenas concerning potential overcharges to Medicaid in the amount of $100 million. Apparently, the pharmaceutical companies involved in this scam inflated the "wholesale" prices charged to Medicaid, thereby pocketing additional profits at the expense of taxpayers.
That pharmaceutical companies would overcharge the government for prescription drugs should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the dealings of the industry. Companies routinely mark up prescription drugs as much as 500,000% over the cost of the raw ingredients, and they engage in monopolistic, mob-like behaviors to block competing, lower cost drugs from Canada and other countries.
In the mean time, the pharmaceutical industry has long since demonstrated its own alarming lack of ethics by, for example, hiding the results of negative drug trials, distorting other trials to show false benefits of drugs, and outright bribing physicians with so-called "consulting fees" if they'll write more prescriptions for their drugs.
I've frequently called for criminal investigations of pharmaceutical companies and even the FDA. This action by the Florida Attorney General is a step in the right direction, but it barely scratches the surface of the extremely profitable criminal operation known as Big Pharma.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, and he is well known as the creator of popular downloadable preparedness programs on financial collapse, emergency food storage, wilderness survival and home defense skills. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams created TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Wednesday, July 21, 2004
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