Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
Stephan: Here you see the naked face of the Illness Profit System. I heard Kentucky Republican Senator and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell say, the day this story broke, that the U.S. has 'the best healthcare system in the world.' It is shameful that a public official would make such a statement, particularly just as this was announced. Note also that no one is actually going to jail. If you had tried some sort of scam for, say, $3000, and been caught like this, you'd be spending a few years in the gulag. And that says nothing about the misery caused by these bad medications.
The British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and pay $3 billion in fines for illegally promoting the antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin and for failing to report safety data about the diabetes drug Avandia, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
The settlement marks the largest payment ever by a drug company, eclipsing the previous record of $2.3 billion set by Pfizer in 2009, the government said.
‘Today’s multibillion-dollar settlement is unprecedented in both size and scope,
