corporate integrity agreement

Two weeks ago, reports of the largest legal settlement involving a pharmaceutical company to date in the US appeared. 

The $3 Billion Settlement

In summary, per the Philadelphia Inquirer,

And the legal settlements for health care organizations keep right on marching along.  Here are the basics, per the Wall Street Journal, starting with the outline of the first settlement for Novo Nordisk:

Drug maker Novo Nordisk A/S's U.S. affiliate has agreed to pay more than $25 million to end investigations by U.S. authorities related to the marketing of NovoSeven and several diabetes drugs.

Omnicare's Trail of Legal Settlements

Here we go again. 

AstraZeneca / Seroquel

One would think that the stories about bad behavior by health care organizations would quiet down just before Christmas, but no...

As reported by the AP:

U.S. attorneys in Boston said Wednesday heart device maker Boston Scientific will pay $22 million to resolve allegations its Guidant division paid kickbacks to doctors to get them to use its heart devices.

Here is the latest in the parade of legal settlements of cases of alleged wrong-doing by health care organizations.  As reported by Duff Wilson in the New York Times,

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said Thursday that it had reached a $520 million agreement to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits over the sale and marketing of its blockbuster psychiatric drug Seroquel.

It was only a month ago that Pfizer Inc, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, submitted to a gargantuan $2.3 billion settlement and yet another corporate integrity agreement.

As we posted here, this was the company's fourth major settlement of charges of unethical marketing behavior since 2002.

Now Pfizer is in trouble again.

As reported by the AP,

We recently posted about Pfizer's $2.3 billion dollar settlement with the US government (here), which we first mentioned six months ago (here).

It is worth reviewing what we know about this settlement. We will start with quoted from the article by Gardiner Harris writing in the New York Times.

The Times of Trenton (New Jersey, USA) reported this insight about the leadership of large health care organizations:

Bristol-Myers Squibb [BMS] is preparing to shut down its aviation operation at Trenton-Mercer Airport, sell four aircraft and dismiss about 32 employees as the drugmaker and leading Mercer County employer seeks to cut costs, according to sources familiar with the company's plans.

Another addition to the cavalcade of settlements, from the Virginian-Pilot,

Amerigroup Corp., which faced $334 million of damage awards and court-imposed penalties from a Medicaid fraud suit in Chicago, said Tuesday that it will pay the U.S. government and state of Illinois $225 million to settle the civil case.