How does making the company pay such a HUGE amount to the government help to lower the cost of the drugs they produce ????? *diz *diz


Pfizer will pay £1.4bn settlement
2 September 2009 02:33pm


Pfizer Inc, the world's largest drug maker, will pay a record $2.3 billion (£1.4bn) civil and criminal penalty over unlawful prescription drug promotions, the US Justice Department has announced.

The department said the $2.3 billion settlement included a $1.2 billion criminal fine, the largest criminal fine in US history.

The agreement also included a criminal forfeiture of $105 million.

"Combating healthcare fraud is one of this administration's top priorities," Associate Attorney General Thomas Perelli said in announcing the settlement.

He said it illustrates ways the department "can help the American public at a time when budgets are tight and healthcare costs are rising."

The overall settlement is the largest ever paid by a drug company for alleged violations of federal drug rules.

The government said the company promoted four prescription drugs, including the pain killer Bextra, as treatments for medical conditions different than those the drugs had been approved for by federal regulators.

Use of drugs for so-called "off-label" medical conditions is not uncommon, but drug manufacturers are prohibited from marketing drugs for uses that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

A Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia and Upjohn Inc., which was acquired in 2003, has entered an agreement to plead guilty to one count of felony misbranding.

"These agreements bring final closure to significant legal matters and help to enhance our focus on what we do best - discovering, developing and delivering innovative medicines to treat patients dealing with some of the world's most debilitating diseases," said Amy W Schulman, senior vice president and general counsel of Pfizer.

© The Press Association

I took Bextra for a while for arthritis. I just figured it was inflamation ::nid::

And Why Didn't The USDA Test And Approve These Drugs For Their Other Effective Uses? And, Could The U.S. Department of Justice Ever Knowingly Be A Party To Political Maleficence?

the USDA does not test anything. The drug companies test the drugs and bring the results to the USDA. It can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to put the drugs through a test for a single condition, and that is why these kinds of things come about. They simply can not afford the time or money to do these tests.

Patent rights only last for fifteen years and most all these tests take ten to twelve years. Once the drug is on the market they only have three to five years to recover the millions upon millions of research dollars, and to test for other uses would put the drug in the place where generic drugs could be manufactured at the same time or before the actual drug.


Just one big %^^$% government mess.

BTW the drug companies make the US customers pay the research costs and that's why it is so much more expensive here compared to canada. They have much longer to sell their product outside the US before cheap competition takes a big chunk of the market.

<<tmbup>>

Yeap!

Goofy World Indeed!

And After All This, The Patient Ends Up Dying Anyway!

Must Be Something In The Air, Maybe Sin?

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Luke 4:18-19

And There Is One Sure Hope

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
John 6:47

And His Name Is Salvation

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Galatians 3:13-14

Praise His Holy Name