Will Trump's Leadership Picks Smack Down Health Care? - A Drug Company Lobbyist, an Entrepreneur Who Wants to Weaken Drug Testing, and a Mysterious Billionaire Who Settled Fraud Charges

President Trump in his inauguration speech promised to reach out to "struggling families" and to benefit "American workers and American families," and promised all Americans "you will never be ignored again."  Yet the Trump transition team, and now presidential administration continues to consider individuals for health care policy leadership roles remarkable for their conflicts of interest, which often did not merely arise from small financial transactions but from their roles as corporate insiders, and in some cases, association with dubiously ethical practices.  They are particularly remarkable for their lack of interest in, if not ignorance of American workers' and families' health, except perhaps as a vehicle for personal profit. 

Discussed in order of increasing potential power.

Jack Kalavritinos for FDA "Beachhead Team"

As reported by StatNews (unfortunately behind a paywall) on January 19,

Former pharmaceutical lobbyist Jack Kalavritinos, who also worked in various capacities for the George W. Bush administration, will take a major role on the 'beachhead' team that the incoming Trump administration is sending to run the Food and Drug Administration following Friday’s inauguration, transition team sources say.

Kalavritinos spent seven years as director of global lobbying for the Irish pharmaceutical and medical device company Covidien, which sells a wide array of hospital supplies around the world.  The US company Medtronic bought Covidien in 2014 and promptly moved its headquarters to Ireland, which had a lower corporate tax rate.

Mr Kalavritinos worked in Department of Health and Human Services as the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs as until 2007 before moving to Covidien in 2008 (look here), and stayed until 2015 (look here).

Thus he is a frequent traveler through the revolving door, going from the Department of Health and Human Services to Covidien, and now back to the DHHS.  Some experts consider the revolving door to be a form of health care corruption (look here).

Further note that he secured this new position despite the fact that he worked in a leadership position at Covidien during its "tax inversion":

Such 'inversions' - deals structured to let American companies take advantage of lower tax rates overseas - began to draw heavy public ire around the time of the Medtronic-Covidien deal.  The Obama administration has sought to crack down on such transactions with new rules from the Treasury Department.

President ... Donald Trump seemed to be referring to such deals, as well as the outsourcing of manufacturing, when he recently accused the pharmaceutical industry of 'getting away with murder.'

Finally, note that Medtronic has quite a history of misbehavior, as documented here, including settling multiple cases alleging its use of kickback, and hiding device safety information. 

Thus, Mr Kalavritinos has been a corporate insider for years, and an insider of a corporation which used financial maneuvers and apparently unethical actions for financial benefit.  In his track record are no indications he has any particular interest in improving the health of American workers and American families. 


Dr Joseph Gulfo for Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration

Dr Gulfo appears to be the latest person to be vetted by the Trump administration to be FDA Commissioner.  As reported by the Boston Business Journal on January 24,

In an interview today, Dr. Joseph Gulfo — an author and former CEO of drug and medical device companies — confirmed that he has spoken with two members of President Donald Trump’s transition team about being the named commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

While Dr Gulfo is a physician, it seems he has not practiced in years.  Instead, he has mainly been an entrepreneur and executive.  As noted in his online biography,

Dr. Gulfo has more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical and medical device industries. As President & COO of Anthra Pharmaceuticals and Chairman of its UK subsidiary, he was responsible for the 1998 NDA approval of Valstar, a drug for superficial bladder cancer, which had sales of $27 MM in 2012, 14 years after its approval. Dr. Gulfo was also instrumental in the development of ProstaScint (Cytogen Corporation), a BLA-approved monoclonal antibody for prostate cancer. He was CEO and Chairman of Antigen Express, an immunotherapy and immunodiagnostics company in the field of vaccines for cancer therapy, antiviral therapy, and asthma, and led its merger. In 2012, he received the American Business Awards’ Maverick of the Year Award....

Note that his personal biography emphasizes the sales of the drugs his companies sold, not their benefits to patients.

More recently,

he served as President & CEO of MELA Sciences (2004-2013), and was Chairman of the Board (2011-2013).

Currently,

 He is Executive Director of the Lewis Center for Healthcare Innovation and Technology at Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) [within the School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences].

His personal biography did not explain how any of his products or corporate accomplishments improve health of American workers of families.

So were he appointed, Dr Gulfo might be considered as transiting the revolving door, with implications as above.  Again, Dr Gulfo did not merely have financial relationships with health care corporations, but was top executive of several corporations, and thus was obviously a corporate insider.

Furthermore, as former top executive of multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, Dr Gulfo seems interested in making FDA standards for drug approval more lenient.  In particular, he has argued for approving drugs based only on their ability to make patients' "biomarkers," that is laboratory test results that may be correlated with clinical outcomes or patient-centered outcomes, but not absolutely.  So he would allow drugs that have never been shown to improve symptoms or functional status, or to reduce disease morbidity, complications, or early death. And it is likely that many drugs approved in this manner would never be proven to have any such benefits.  But all drugs have side effects, so this policy would expose patients to risks, without the chance of obtaining any benefits.  This is not what one should really call patient-centric.

Nothing in his track record suggests any great interest in the health of American workers and American families, except as consumers of his products.


Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong for "Health Care Czar"

As StatNews reported on January 24, 

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, an audacious biotech billionaire who has pledged to 'solve health care,' has been in talks with the Trump administration about the possibility of serving in a senior role overseeing the US health care system, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

Soon-Shiong, a trained surgeon, has met with President Trump and his advisers at least twice in recent weeks. During those discussions, he raised the possibility that he could serve as a 'health care czar' with a broad portfolio in the administration as it seeks to reshape the health care system and replace the Affordable Care Act, according to two individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Far from solving health care, Dr Soon-Shiong seems known for making inflated claims that are never borne out.

In the early 1990s, Soon-Shiong claimed that he may have cured diabetes in a patient named Steven Craig by implanting cells that secrete insulin. The treatment worked, for a while — launching an outpouring of media attention for Soon-Shiong’s diabetes company, VivoRx. But he faced criticism in ensuing years, as the results were not reproducible.

'It’s far too early to view this as a cure, or even a therapy,' Dr. James Gavin, then-president of the American Diabetes Association, once said of Soon-Shiong’s therapy. 'We don’t need this kind of inappropriate hype.'

So this may be why

he now has a reputation for talking more than doing. 'Every time I hear his name uttered by an academic oncologist, it’s with an eye roll,' Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist at Oregon Health and Science University, told STAT late last year. 'If you asked a dozen oncologists what they think of him, his general reputation is that of a shameless self-promoter.'

In fact, his claims have gone from inflated to allegedly fraudulent,

Generic drugmaker Mylan had invested in VivoRx to support its diabetes work, but much of the money was actually used to support a separate company Soon-Shiong set up — VivoRx Pharmaceuticals, which researched cancer drugs instead. That resulted in a fraud lawsuit from Mylan and Terrence Soon-Shiong, Patrick’s business partner.

Patrick Soon-Shiong paid $32 million to settle the lawsuit.

Furthermore, while he apparently became a billionaire, there is some controversy about how he did so. As another StatNews article reported on January 25,

The core of Soon-Shiong’s enterprise is called NantWorks, from which at least 10 interconnected biotech companies have grown. Each has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and each tends to make deals with other firms under Soon-Shiong’s umbrella.

But not one has successfully developed a drug, and investor enthusiasm has waned.

Nonetheless, apparently Dr Soon-Shiong has paid himself handsomely, presumably in part of using other peopeles' money:

But Soon-Shiong personally has done well. In 2015, NantKwest paid him more than $148 million in stock and options, and he still owns a roughly 50 percent share of the company. He also owns about 57 percent of NantHealth, according to a regulatory filing, a stake worth more than $500 million.

All told, Bloomberg estimates he’s worth $8.8 billion.

The one drug with which he is most identified was apparently just an old drug repackaged, but sold for a then extremely handsome price:

It seems a little quaint now: More than 10 years ago, Soon-Shiong’s signature cancer drug, Abraxane, came under fire for being too costly. The medical community was outraged at Abraxane’s $4,200 price tag, describing the drug as 'old wine in a new bottle' because it’s an updated version of the long-used chemotherapy drug paclitaxel. Of course, considering the pricing of cancer drugs today, that’s practically a bargain.

Thanks to the commercial success of Abraxane, Celgene bought Soon-Shiong’s company, Abraxis, for a stunning $2.9 billion. That’s where he got most of his wealth.

Note that Abraxane is simply paclitaxel "protein bound." While it was not very innovative, Dr Soon-Shiong made it very pricey, leading to his own financial benefit, but not clearly to big benefits for patients. 

So Dr Soon-Shiong is the ultimate corporate insider, a multi-billionaire corporate CEO, an "entrepreneur" who has mainly benefited from financial manipulation, a great "innovator" who has never developed an innovative product that actually has been shown to improve human health.  Again, there is nothing in his track record demonstrating concern for the health of American workers and American families. 


Summary

These latest examples show that the Trump transition team and now the Trump administration seem to have affinity for health care advisers and leaders with numerous and severe conflicts of interest, whose expertise may be more in marketing and public relations that biomedical science, medicine, public health, or health policy, and who are known to make outrageous claims, even to the point of carrying whiffs of fraud.  They are all rich corporate insiders.  The administration's latest flirtations include a former lobbyist for a biotechnology firm, and two non-practicing physician-entrepreneurs.  The former worked for a company with a long history of ethical lapses.  One of the latter has promised many breakthroughs, none of which has so far apparently panned out, and settled allegations of fraud.  Nothing made public about any of them at this point suggests that they have deep underlying concerns for patients' and the public's health. 

While their flamboyant histories may appeal to someone like Mr Trump, with his own history of outrageous marketing stunts, and of marketing dubious health schemes (look here), their potential to put the health needs of patients and the public first is not obvious.  None of the three people discussed above are credible candidates to lead any part of any US government agency involved in health, health care, or public health, in my opinion.  None of these three people displayed any great concern for patients' or the public's health, despite Mr Trump's fervent claims that he will not ignore American workers and American families.

To repeat, true health care reform requires well-informed leaders who uphold health care professionals' values, put patient's and the public's health ahead of all other considerations, avoid self-interest and conflicts of interest, are honest and ethical, and surely are not corrupt.  They need to work in the context of a government that is of, by and for the people, not of, by and for a demagogic leader.

US health care may be heading for not better health for American workers and families, but for a Trump administered smackdown, like the one he delivered on a professional wrestling show:




Maybe it would have been better had Mr Trump ignored us American workers and families.

Turn, Turn, Turn - Another Health Care Revolving Door Update

It has been a while since our last revolving door update, so it's time to take another spin.


Summary of the Revolving Door Phenomenon

Before we get to some cases, though, let me summarize an important article on the revolving door that came out since.  This was published by U4, the "anti-corruption resource center" NGO based in lovely Bergen, Norway.  The title was "The Revolving Door Indicator: Estimating the distortionary power of the revolving door."  Although it's main point was to summarize a new measure the importance of the revolving door in a particular economic sector, it started with a very useful summary of the revolving door phenomenon.  It included a useful definition

According to Transparency International UK, the term 'revolving door' refers to 'the movement of   individuals between positions of public office and jobs in the private sector, in either direction.'

To expand,

The revolving door involves two distinct types of movement.  The first is from the public to the private sector, as regulators (ministers, cabinet secretaries, legislators, high-level officials, advisers) leave the public sector to enter the private sector they have regulated. The second is from the private to the public sector, as high-level executives of regulated companies enter the executive branch, the legislature, or key regulatory agencies.

It also included some idea of prevalence

The revolving door is particularly common in countries where explicit bribes cannot be paid safely, and thus regulators look forward to future employment with the regulated firms

We will discuss what the U4 report said about the implications of the revolving door after a quick review of the cases we have run across since May, 2014, involving the US government.  They will be listed in order of their appearance in the news.

Former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Colleague at ONC to Aledade (Company Supporting Accountable Care Organizations)

In June, 2014, various versions of this story appeared.  The Modern Healthcare version stated,

Dr. Farzad Mostashari, former head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, is starting a new firm, Aledade, to help independent primary-care physicians form accountable care organizations. The startup has $4.5 million in seed funding from venture capital firm Venrock.

Independent practices looking to form ACOs have to expend money 'to hire the people, to get the agreements, to get the licenses, to do the legal work, to hire the executive director, and a medical director, practice transformation, the analytics software, the data warehousing, the EHR interfaces,' he said. 'All of that takes money,' often $1 million to $2 million.

Note that the current concept of the "accountable care organization" [ACO] includes heavy dependence on the electronic health records (EHRs) and other health information technology that Dr Mostashari had been so vigorously promoting as head of the ONC, so this transition seems to fit the revolving door rubric.

It also turns out that one of Dr Mostashari's former ONC colleagues was already at Aledade  

Mostashari will be joined by Mat Kendall, a former leader with the regional extension center program at ONC, who will be executive vice president

Former US Senators to Lobby for Medtronic and Covidien

In August, 2014, per Bloomberg,

Former U.S. Senators Trent Lott and John Breaux are part of a lobbying effort by companies that want to preserve the option of reducing their corporate taxes by moving their legal addresses overseas.

Nine U.S. companies that have sought cross-border mergers for tax reasons, are considering doing so or are targets of such deals have been pressuring lawmakers since April on legislation to stop the practice, federal disclosure reports show.

They include Medtronic Inc., the Minneapolis-based company that is seeking to acquire Dublin-based Covidien Plc. Medtronic paid Breaux-Lott Leadership Group $200,000 in June to block legislation from moving forward. Breaux, a Democrat, was once a member of the Senate Finance Committee. Lott, a Republican, is a former Senate majority leader.

Note that as Senator, Breaux had an important role in health policy, particularly the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services to Drinker Biddle & Reath (Lobbying Firm)

In August, 2014, per the Washington Post,

District Policy Group, the lobbying unit of law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath, is experimenting with a new model of using outside consultants to capture new business in the health-care field.

The group, which lobbies primarily on health-care policy, has taken the unusual step of forming an advisory board that includes external consultants. The outside advisers are not employees of the firm and instead receive a consultant’s fee, which means the firm does not have to pay their salary or benefits, but can still tout their services to clients.

The board was formed in July and is made up of four Drinker Biddle attorneys and two outside consultants, Tracy Sefl, a Democratic communications strategist, and Michael O’Grady, a health economics specialist and former Health and Human Services assistant secretary under President George W. Bush. Both Sefl and O’Grady have day jobs running their own consulting shops.

This seems to require no further comment.

Former Federal Trade Commissioner to Herbalife

In October, 2014, per the Hill,

Herbalife has hired a former federal regulator to run its compliance program as it deals with allegations of running a pyramid scheme.

Pamela Jones Harbour, who served at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2003 to 2010, has been named the company’s senior vice president of global member compliance and privacy, according to media reports.

The FTC opened a probe into Herbalife’s business practices earlier this year after lobbyists, interest groups and policymakers asked for a review.

Shortly after the FTC announced its investigation, the FBI began looking into how the direct-selling company recruits new distributors.

Herbalife is best known for its meal-replacement shakes and dietary supplement products. Harbour says she has been a Herbalife customer since 2004, according to Reuters, favoring the company’s Formula 1 shake mix.

Note that the FTC devotes considerable energy to health care issues, and Herbalife styles itself a "a global nutrition company" which makes "weight management" and "energy and fitness" products.

Director of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Merck as President of Merck Vaccines, then Executive Vice President for Strategic Communications, Global Public Policy and Population Health

In December, 2014, per a news release on BusinessWire,

Merck (NYSE:MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced the appointment of Dr. Julie Gerberding, 59, as executive vice president for strategic communications, global public policy and population health, effective Dec. 15. In this newly created Executive Committee position, Gerberding, who most recently served as president of Merck Vaccines, will be responsible for Merck’s global public policy, corporate responsibility and communications functions, as well as the Merck Foundation and the Merck for Mothers program.

Note that

Prior to joining Merck, Gerberding served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2002-2009 and before that served as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion.

From UnitedHealth (Optum Subsidiary) Executive to Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services

In January, 2015, per the Business Journals,

Marilyn Tavenner's replacement at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is a former executive at one of the contractors for the initially botched HealthCare.gov insurance exchange.

Andy Slavitt, former group executive vice president of United Health Group's Optum unit, joined CMS last June to help fix HealthCare.gov. Now he'll be acting administrator of CMS.

An Optum subsidiary, Quality Software Services Inc., was one of the original contractors for HealthCare.gov. QSSI developed the exchange's data services hub and a registration tool that allows users to create secure accounts.

Apparently nothing succeeds like failure.


Discussion

I apologize for the somewhat desultory way I have been summarizing health care revolving door cases.  My excuse is that such cases are almost never publicized as such.  Most of the stories above were found when looking for something else.  Despite its potential importance, the revolving door phenomenon gets little consistent coverage in the news media, and the particular issue of the revolving door affecting health care is particularly anechoic.  (If one searches for "'health care revolving door," one finds discussion of patients who are frequently re-admitted to the hospital.)  There is one website devoted to the revolving door affecting the US government, (OpenSecrets.org has a database here.)   However, it is not searchable by sector, and seems not to be complete (that is, for example, it fails to contain most of the cases I listed above). 

None of the cases above got more than minimal media coverage, yet they all involved people who at one time held high government positions, including US Senators, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner, the director of Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) within the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), an Assistant Secretary of DHHS, and the National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology. So the anechoic effect persists regarding this issue.

Yet the revolving door is a significant issue.  As discussed in the U4 article, 

The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms. But it generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy, especially when this power is concentrated within a few firms.

Also, the principal way the revolving door can benefit a company is...

The rent-seeking channel: The revolving door is used to capture public resources, through legal and illegal means, rather than to increase production or efficiency.  Transparency International UK (2011) and the OECD (2009) point out that the revolving door may lead to various schemes involving conflicts of interest, both during and after a regulator’s term in public office. This in turn generates undue bureaucratic and political power for firms using such schemes

Furthermore,

The revolving door is also related to lawful behaviours (Brezis 2013), termed 'legal corruption' by Kaufmann and Vicente (2011). This phrase refers to 'efforts by companies and individuals to shape law or policies to their advantage, often done quasi-legally, via campaign finance, lobbying or exchange of favors to politicians, regulators and other government officials. […] In its more extreme form, legal corruption can lead to control of entire states, through the phenomenon dubbed ‘state capture,’ and result in enormous losses for societies'

So,

Firms connected through the revolving door may therefore derive undue advantages by legally and illegally influencing the formulation, adoption, and implementation of laws, regulations, and public policies. For example, when firms are connected to (former) members of Parliament [or the legislature], they may influence the enactment of laws and regulations in their favour. When firms are connected to (former) ministers [or in the US, cabinet secretaries] and their advisers, they may influence the upstream formulation and implementation of policies and regulations in their favour. When firms are connected to (former) high-level officials, they may influence the downstream implementation of regulations in their favour.

Finally,

Empirical studies suggest that the revolving door gives firms political and bureaucratic power that enables them to divert state resources by biasing public procurement processes (Goldman, Rocholl, and So 2013; Cingano and Pinotti 2013), obtaining preferential access to public finance (Faccio, Masulis, and McConnell 2006; Boubakri et al. 2012), and unduly benefiting from tax exemption, arrears, and subsidies (Faccio 2010; Slinko, Yakovlev, and Zhuravskaya 2005; Johnson and Mitton 2003).

Therefore, firms politically connected through the revolving door tend to shape laws and regulations in their favour and to divert state resources to their own benefit. They are unlikely to gain a productivity advantage, and indeed may reduce productivity in the private and the public sectors. The literature on state capture and political influence (Hellman and Kaufmann 2004; Hellman, Jones, and Kaufmann 2003; Slinko, Yakovlev, and Zhuravskaya 2005) supports the thesis that such distortions result from the high concentration of political and bureaucratic power among a few powerful firms.

That all suggests that the revolving door in health care ought to get attention beyond posts in Health Care Renewal, but so far there has been precious little of that.  The continuing egregiousness of the revolving door in health care shows how health care leadership can play mutually beneficial games, regardless of the their effects on patients' and the public's health.  Once again, true health care reform would cut the ties between government and corporate leaders that have lead to government of, for and by corporate executives rather than the people at large

Why Do People Think US Health Care is Corrupt? - The Examples of Amgen, Mallinckrodt Settling Charges of Giving Kickbacks to Doctors to Induce them to Prescribe Their Products, While No Individual Suffers Negative Consequences

We recently posted a discussion of the results of Transparency International's 2013 corruption barometer, focusing on the US results.  43% of survey respondents thought US health care is corrupt.  Our coverage, apparently the only substantial discussion of the US results published in the US, got star ranking for a while on Reddit.  But many anonymous commentators dismissed the survey results as coming from a naive public who does not understand health care economics.

I submit that one can recognize corruption without a degree in economics.  In fact, as we discussed in the initial post, there is a lot of evidence for the prevalence of health care corruption in the US, other developed countries, and globally.  It is just that such evidence rarely gets discussed in public (the anechoic effect, as we say on this blog), probably because doing so might make those who are profiting from the corruption uncomfortable.

So today let me summarize just the latest evidence about US health care corruption, as defined by Transparency International as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.  (Note that the Transparency International definition of corruption, which is an ethical, not necessarily a legal definition, at least in most jurisdictions.)

Amgen

An article in the Thousand Oaks [CA] Acorn described the legal settlement,

Amgen Inc. paid the United States more than $15 million this month as part of a settlement agreement to resolve allegations that the biopharmaceutical company used financial kickbacks to persuade doctors to prescribe the cancer drug Xgeva to their patients.

The settlement resolves a qui tam, or 'whistleblower,' lawsuit filed Jan. 20, 2012, in federal court by William Davis and Spencer Miller—two Amgen employees who work at the company’s Thousand Oaks headquarters.

Davis, sales planning director for Amgen’s oncology business unit, and Miller, a senior marketing manager at the company, alleged their employer violated both the Medicare Anti- Kickback Statute and False Claims Act—two laws that aim to prevent Medicare fraud and abuse.

The allegations were that Amgen used a somewhat complex and deceptive strategy to pay doctors who prescribed its drug, using a survey about practice patterns as a cover story,

According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Amgen used what the company called 'Deep Dive' contracts—or data purchase agreements—in an effort to boost sales of Xgeva, which was approved by the FDA in late 2010 for use by certain cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

The drug is most commonly prescribed to prevent bone fractures in patients who have been diagnosed with a certain type of tumor after it has spread to the bones.

Under Amgen’s original Deep Dive program, the company paid doctors to fill out an Internet-based survey, which asked how they were treating patients with bone cancer and which drugs they used.

'That’s not illegal to do,' said Abraham Meltzer, assistant U.S. attorney in the Los Angeles civil fraud section. 'A lot of pharmaceutical companies purchase data legitimately on how various conditions are treated.'

But Amgen altered its Deep Dive program, Meltzer said, by increasing the amount of money it offered to pay the doctors who specifically prescribed Xgeva to their patients.

Also,

 The U.S. attorney’s office also alleged that Amgen paid oncologists and urologists to participate in market research surveys, audience response sessions and advisory programs that publicized the benefits of Xgeva.

As is typical in such cases, the settlement did not require any contrition on Amgen's part.  Instead,

In a prepared statement emailed to the Thousand Oaks Acorn on Tuesday, Amgen denied all allegations of wrongful conduct.

'Amgen settled this matter to avoid the delay, uncertainty, inconvenience and expense of protracted litigation,' the statement read.

As is also typical, there seemed to be no negative consequences for the human beings who must have engineered the "Deep Dive" contracts and the payments to the oncologists and urologists.  Nor was there any overt consideration of Amgen's sketchy recent ethical record, as described by the Acorn,

This month’s settlement is not the first time the biopharmaceutical giant has been held to answer for kickback allegations or false claims charges.

In December 2012, Amgen pleaded guilty to illegally selling the drug Aranesp, an anti-anemia drug, for uses or doses not approved by the FDA, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

As part of the false claims case, which was also brought on by a whistleblower lawsuit, Amgen agreed to pay a $612-million civil settlement to the U.S. and individual states, as well as $150 million in criminal penalties.

Then in April, the Thousand Oaks-based company paid the U.S. another $24.9 million to settle whistleblower allegations that it gave financial kickbacks to long-term care pharmacy providers in exchange for switching Medicare and Medicaid benefi- ciaries from a competing drug to Aranesp, a DOJ press release states.

We discussed the guilty plea in the cases of Aranesp misbranding and alleged kickbacks to pharmacists.  Also, in 2013, we noted that Amgen settled allegations that it overpriced its products sold to government health programs in 36 states.  We also noted that despite, or perhaps because of all this misbehavior, the current CEO of Amgen received over $13 million in compensation in 2012, while his predecessor walked away with over $9 million that year.

Mallinckrodt

A small news item from the Associated Press, via the Nanaimo (MO) Daily News, outlined this legal settlement,

A St. Louis-based drug maker will pay $3.5 million to settle allegations that it paid doctors to prescribe 'outdated, third rate' antidepressants and sleep aids, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco announced.

In particular,

The lawsuit alleged the company targeted doctors who prescribed the type of antidepressants and sleep pills Mallinkrodt manufactured.

Again, the company was allowed to settle without admitting anything.

'While we deny the allegations in this matter, we are glad they are resolved,' company spokeswoman Erica Abbett said in a statement.

Again, although human beings would have had to engineer any payments to the doctors to induce them to prescribe, no human beings suffered any consequences as a result of this settlement.

Mallinckrodt, a storied corporate name, had been acquired by Covidien, and then was spun off again as a separate company in June, 2013 (look here).  It had been acquired in 2000 by Tyco International, which later spun off its health care operations as Covidien.   According to its 2013 proxy statement, Covidien's CEO received over $10 million in total compensation in 2012.


[Note that Tyco was the subject of one of the major scandal stories of the early 21st century.  In 2005, at a time when law enforcement authorities were still pursuing actions against elite corporate executives,  its former CEO and CFO were convicted of stealing millions from it (see USAToday summary)].

Summary - Why do People Think US Health Care is Corrupt?  

Again, the Transparency International definition of corruption is abuse of entrusted power for private gain.  I would argue that pharmaceutical companies are entrusted with the power to honestly sell drugs whose benefits to patients outweigh their harms.  I would further argue that paying physicians, who are entrusted with providing the best possible care to each individual patient, to prescribe drugs which may not be the best treatment for individual patients is an abuse of both the company's and the physicians' entrusted power.  Further, such payments provide private gain to the physicians.  They also may increase revenues for the company who makes these payments, and very likely these increased revenues lead to better compensation for those in the company who authorized, directed or directly provided the payments, that is to private gain for these corporate insiders.  Thus it seems that kickbacks to physicians to prescribe drugs is a form of corruption.

While both cases above were settled without admissions of guilt, such settlements do not refute the contentions that kickbacks were given.  Why would the law enforcement officials have brought the cases in the absence of evidence, and why would the companies have settled if the cases were completely baseless?  So I would argue that these settlements provide evidence, although not legal proof, that kickbacks were given.  People with far more legal knowledge than I possess have remarked on the absurdity of settling cases of alleged wrongdoing without any acknowledgement or statement of the facts (see posts here and here).

We have posted lots of instances of conflicts of interest affecting health care, many of which likely involved payments providing private gain that raised the risk of abuse of entrusted power.  We have also discussed many instances of crime, kickbacks, bribery, fraud other kinds of health care corruption.

So were the people who answered the Transparency International survey naive and foolish about health care corruption?  Or did they have reasonable beliefs about a topic that the powers that be really do not want to discuss?