Last week, five people – all former Insys Therapeutics execs- were convicted:
…of racketeering conspiracy for bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive painkiller to patients who didn’t need it and tricking insurers into paying for it. (Source: Boston Globe)
No sentences announced as of yet, but the Insys Five may be put away for up to 20 years.
Their product – Subsys – is an oral fentanyl spray that was supposed to be used for cancer pain.
Having watched my husband die of cancer, I’m all for anything that can alleviate pain.
Jim was fortunate in that, up until the last few days of his life, he didn’t experience much by way of intolerable pain. Even post surgeries, he didn’t take much by way of pain medication. But those last couple of days, the pain – both existential and physical – that Jim had was pretty terrible, and, in the end, he was taking morphine.
But there are types of cancer – stomach, pancreatic et al – that are supposed to be spectacularly painful, and it’s wonderful that there are drugs that can dull or eliminate extreme pain, especially in end-of-life situations where there’s no worry about someone getting hooked.
Insys had quite the model for getting doctors hooked on prescribing Subsys:
Prosecutors said the five defendants ran Insys like mobsters, displaying “brazen audacity.” They pressured sales staff to persuade doctors to prescribe higher and costlier doses of Subsys, and got physicians to abandon their duty to “first, do no harm.” Most patients who were prescribed Subsys didn’t have cancer, according to the government, and some got addicted.
I’ve had episodic pain during my life – a couple of broken bones, here and there a bad back, a cracked tooth on a transatlantic flight – but I’ve never experienced relentless, day in, day out pain. Hard not to be sympathetic for those who do have it, but if the opioid epidemic has taught us anything, it’s that it’s too damned easy for a doctor to throw an opioid after pain, rather than offer non-addictive (and non-pharmaceutical) methods for dealing with chronic pain.
But Insys wanted to sell more and more Subsys, and would do whatever they needed to do to make more and more possible.
As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, eight doctors and medical practitioners got more than $1.1 million disguised as “speaking fees.” Insys also set up a reimbursement center where employees allegedly lied to health insurers about patients’ symptoms to get them to cover Subsys for people without cancer.
Don’t know which idea is more evil: bribing doctors or doctoring up symptoms. (In case you’re wondering, some doctors who took kickbacks from Insys have been sentenced to prison time. I was going to say that having doctors in the hoosegow might improve the health of the prison population. Then I remembered that these are greedy, lazy-arse doctors who casually doled out opioids in exchange for a few bucks.)
Anyway, the topper for me:
One of the defendants, Sunrise Lee, a sales executive and former stripper…allegedly performed a lap dance for a doctor to get him to prescribe Subsys.
Her lawyer noted that this incident “was probably pretty funny”. I guess you had to be there.
I will add that it’s nice to see someone’s career progressing, but I don’t know if pharma sales is actually a step up from being a stripper.
Pharma companies in general have a pretty bad rap, but Insys sounds like an especially sleazy outfit. They hired attractive, but otherwise unqualified, young women as sales people, and trained them to hold the hands of doctors while encouraging them to push more Subsys.(Awwww, sweet….)
They created higher dose packages for the express purpose of getting patients hooked.
They deliberately sought out the sorts of doctors that were most likely to become drug pushers for them. (And if there’s any doubt in your mind about the doctors being aware that they were being played, if a doctor went below the required ratio, i.e., they didn’t hit their target of $2 worth of Subsys sold for each $1 they were paid in “speakers fees,” they were dumped from the “speaker” program
I understand aggressive sales. After all, I spent my career in high tech marketing, largely working around high ticket products. I worked with sales folks who cut deals. I worked with sales folks who wined and dined their prospects. I’m guessing there were at least a few visits to strip clubs and cigar bars that I wasn’t invited to.
I worked with sales folks who promised all sorts of product enhancements to close a deal. (Those of us in marketing/product management were always thrilled when we were handed that list of promises.)
I occasionally got wind of something that was a bit shady. I remember one deal with a hardware vendor, where our company agreed to buy x amount of their gear in exchange for them ordering y’s worth of our services. Seemed a bit fishy to me…
But I sure don’t remember any sales person providing a lap dance, or directly bribing a prospect.
Anyway, I’m glad that Insys’ execs bad behavior is catching up to them. Good!
Now bring Purdue Pharma on!
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