The doctors who wrote the prescriptions should be charged and never allowed to practice again #HippocraticOath “do no harm“.
According to the Department of Justice, John Kapoor, 74, of Phoenix, Arizona, used bribes, kickbacks, and other fraudulent practices to get doctors to overprescribe the fentanyl drug, called Subsys. Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine. As such, Subsys is only intended to treat severe pain in cancer patients. But according to the DOJ, many patients receiving Subsys didn’t have cancer.
The DOJ alleges that Kapoor, along with six former executives at Insys, paid doctors and pain clinics in various states to write “large numbers of prescriptions.” The department also alleges that Insys used fraudulent means to get health insurance providers to cover the harmful prescriptions.
Last month, a Senate investigation led by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), released an audio recording of an Insys representative lying to a pharmaceutical benefit manager in order to get an inappropriate Subsys prescription covered. In that case, the patient—who did not have cancer—later died from an adverse reaction to the drug.
Source: news.ycombinator.com