{"id":180854,"date":"2016-12-11T20:02:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T01:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/11\/remember-when-i-said-that-big-pharma-was-fueling-the-opioid-epidemic\/"},"modified":"2016-12-11T20:02:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T01:02:00","slug":"remember-when-i-said-that-big-pharma-was-fueling-the-opioid-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/11\/remember-when-i-said-that-big-pharma-was-fueling-the-opioid-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember When I Said that Big Pharma was Fueling the Opioid Epidemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>We now have accusations that <a href=\"https:\/\/consumerist.com\/2016\/12\/09\/former-pharma-execs-accused-of-boosting-fentanyl-sales-by-bribing-doctors-with-sham-speaking-engagements\/\">drug companies bribed doctors to overprescribe Fentanyl<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Fentanyl is an incredibly potent opioid painkiller; it acts quickly and powerfully, but doesn\u2019t last as long as others, meaning its medical application is limited. So if you\u2019re a drug company trying to boost sales of your new fentanyl spray, how do you sell more of a product that very few people have a real need for? You could bribe doctors with paid \u201cspeaking engagements,\u201d take them out and show them the \u201cbest nights of their life,\u201d all so they write prescriptions for patients who probably shouldn\u2019t be getting your drug.<\/p>\n<p>This is according on an indictment [<a href=\"https:\/\/consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/12\/insys_indictment.pdf\">PDF<\/a>] filed yesterday by the Justice Department against the former CEO and five other employees of Insys Therapeutics, makers of the Subsys brand fentanyl spray, a fast-acting form of the drug that was primarily intended for cancer patients experiencing high levels of pain that couldn\u2019t be managed through more traditional opioids. <\/p>\n<p>The DOJ alleges that, starting in 2012, former Insys CEO Michael Babich and his fellow defendants bribed and provided illegal kickbacks to at least ten physicians \u2014 mostly operators of pain clinics \u2014 in ten different states.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Clearly. the problem is that our regulatory solution does not have enough free market.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to see a sh%$ load of prosecutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We now have accusations that drug companies bribed doctors to overprescribe Fentanyl: Fentanyl is an incredibly potent opioid painkiller; it acts quickly and powerfully, but doesn\u2019t last as long as others, meaning its medical application is limited. So if you\u2019re a drug company trying to boost sales of your new fentanyl spray, how do you &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[761,877,766,811,878,870],"class_list":["post-180854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-drugs","tag-evil","tag-healthcare","tag-medical","tag-pharma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}