Title:
Illegal Marketing of Drugs: Pfizer's Record Fine
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
The world's largest drug company has agreed to pay
almost two and a half billion dollars for illegal
marketing of medicines. The settlement between
Pfizer and the United States Justice Department was
announced in September.
The settlement is the nation's largest ever in a
case of health care fraud. It also includes the
largest criminal fine ever in any case in the United
States, more than one billion dollars. Pfizer agreed
to pay another billion dollars for violations of a
civil law, the False Claims Act.
Pfizer, based in New York, had sales last year of
forty-eight billion dollars.
A Pfizer division, Pharmacia & Upjohn, agreed to
plead guilty to a criminal violation over the
painkiller Bextra. Pfizer pushed sales of Bextra for
several uses unapproved by the government because of
safety concerns. It also pushed for use in
unapproved amounts. Pfizer withdrew Bextra from the
market in two thousand five because of links to
heart attacks and other problems.
Pfizer also faced civil charges over Bextra as well
as three other drugs. Officials said Pfizer paid
health care providers to prescribe these medicines
for conditions other than the ones for which they
are approved. This is called "off-label" use of a
drug.
Doctors are permitted to try off-label uses to treat
their patients. The idea is that a doctor might find
other ways that a drug is effective. But federal law
bars drug companies from marketing their products
for unapproved uses.
Kathleen Sebelius is the secretary of health and
human services. She said the settlement includes the
most comprehensive corporate integrity agreement
that a drug company has ever signed in the United
States.
Under the agreement, doctors will have a way to
report abuses by Pfizer sales representatives. And
officials said Pfizer will have to make "detailed
disclosures" on its Web site. Pfizer announced a
plan in February to publicly disclose its financial
relationships with doctors, medical organizations
and patient groups.
Yet this is not the company's first corporate
integrity agreement with the government. Pfizer has
now been fined for illegal marketing four times
since two thousand two.
Prescription drugs represent only about one-tenth of
all health care spending in the United States. But
fast-growing demand and prices have made them part
of the debate over health reform.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
