5 doctors charged with taking kickbacks to tout painkiller

“NEW YORK (AP) — Five New York City doctors were arrested Friday on charges that they accepted bribes and kickbacks from an Arizona-based pharmaceutical company to prescribe large volumes of a highly addictive painkiller.

They pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court to an unsealed indictment charging them with conspiracy, among other charges.

Prosecutors say the doctors, four men and a woman, collected tens of thousands of dollars working for the company's "Speakers Bureau" over a four-year stretch beginning in August 2012. The company, Insys Therapeutics Inc., hasn't commented.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said the doctors reneged on their oath as doctors to put the care of their patients above all else. He said they accepted bribes in the form of speaking fees in exchange for prescribing millions of dollars' worth of a potent fentanyl-based spray that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and used their patients as an "instrument for profit."

For full article see...
http://gazette.com/5-doctors-charged-with-taking-kickbacks-to-tout-painkiller/article/feed/548869

 

I'll bet that is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

It’s a WIP.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/a...-patients-who-shouldn-t-have-received-n767311

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/a...ged-bribing-doctors-prescribe-opioids-n814686