|
|
Eight Acquitted in Drug Incentives Case
The New York Times
July 15, 2004
Jurors acquitted eight current and former employees of TAP Pharmaceutical Products on Wednesday of charges they offered doctors improper consulting fees, dinners, golf trips and other incentives to induce them to prescribe certain drugs.
The federal jury deliberated for parts of four days after a three-month trial.
The case against TAP was closely watched by the drug industry and the medical profession, which have been criticized in recent years for giving and receiving perquisites.
Critics say the practice drives up the already high cost of prescription drugs and erodes public confidence that doctors are prescribing the right medicines.
Prosecutors argued that the TAP employees provided golf and ski trips, free dinners and other incentives to doctors, along with free drug samples, in exchange for the physicians' agreement to prescribe TAP's prostate cancer drug Lupron and the heartburn medicine Prevacid.
The government also charged that current and former executives and sales managers at TAP conspired to defraud Medicare and Medicaid by urging doctors to bill the government for the free drug samples.
But defense lawyers argued that the employees offered the samples to promote the drugs, a practice that is legal, and that the employees offered standard consulting fees to doctors, who were not obligated in return to prescribe TAP's drugs.
The defense also said the employees never encouraged doctors to bill Medicare and Medicaid for the free samples.
TAP itself was not on trial. The government settled with the company in 2001 for $875 million.
TAP, based in Lake Forest, Ill., is a joint venture between Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill., and Takeda Chemical Industries of Japan.
|
|
