GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3B fine for health fraud.

'GlaxoSmithKline LLC will pay $3 billion and plead guilty to promoting two popular drugs for unapproved uses and to failing to disclose important safety information on a third in the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history, the Justice Department said Monday. 

Accompanying the criminal case was a civil settlement in which the government said the company's improper marketing included providing doctors with expensive resort vacations, European hunting trips, high-paid speaking tours and even tickets to a Madonna concert. 


"For far too long, we have heard that the pharmaceutical industry views these settlements merely as the cost of doing business," Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart F. Delery, head of Justice's civil division, said at the news conference. "That is why this administration is committed to using every available tool to defeat health care fraud." 


The prior record-setting case involved Pfizer Inc., the world's biggest drugmaker. Pfizer paid the government $2.3 billion in criminal and civil fines for improperly marketing 13 different drugs, including Viagra and cholesterol fighter Lipitor. Pfizer was accused of encouraging doctors to prescribe its drugs with free golf, massages, and junkets to posh resorts.'


Big pharma, multi-national food companies, banks and politicians, rotten to the core. And people wonder why the state of diabetes care is lamentable. Diabetics are cannon fodder and the recent audit confirms this. No progress is being made in diabetics outcomes whatsoever.


Eddie


http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-glaxosmithkline-to-pay-3b-fine-for-health-fraud-20120702,0,6348215.story