Doctors in five states charged with prescribing pain killers for cash, sex

[CatWoman]

Dozens of medical professionals in five states were charged Wednesday with participating in the illegal prescribing of more than 32 million pain pills, including doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids.

The 60 people indicted include 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurse practitioners and seven other licensed medical professionals. The charges involve more than 350,000 illegal prescriptions written in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama and West Virginia, according to indictments unsealed in federal court in Cincinnati.

“That is the equivalent of one opioid dose for every man, woman and child in the five states in the region that we’ve been targeting,” Brian Benczkowski, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview. “If these medical professionals behave like drug dealers, you can rest assured that the Justice Department is going to treat them like drug dealers.”

The charges include unlawful distribution or dispensing of controlled substances by a medical professional and health-care fraud. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, and many of the defendants face multiple counts. At least one doctor is charged in connection with a death caused by the opioids, officials said.

The indictments are part of a broader effort by the Justice Department to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic, which claimed the lives of 47,600 people in 2017 alone, the latest year that federal overdose data is available.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/doctors-in-five-states-charged-with-prescribing-pain-killers-for-cash-sex/2019/04/17/7670d20e-607e-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html?utm_term=.55f9e83d5735&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

[mr_lebowski]

1. 32M pills, huh? That would've been enough to supply 1750 Mr. L's for 1 entire year circa 2002 ...

Sounds pretty staggering in scale ... until you realize what one addict can consume in a year. 20,000 pills worth (if based on 5mg pills like vicodin or percocet) is not that uncommon.

STILL though ... trading them for sex is about as scummy as it gets. Throw the book at these assholes ...

[malaise]

2. Holy Shite

Greed kills - literally.

[gratuitous]

3. Seems like Big Pharma learned quite well from firearms manufacturers

Firearms manufacturers, shut out of or hampered in some markets due to actual regulation of firearms, flood a nearby geographic market with weapons, and advertise heavily in media that includes the restricted market. And what do you know? Some people who would be stopped from acquiring a weapon in their own city find a ready vendor in an area with significantly looser regulations. The manufacturers feign complete ignorance of this process, insisting that they're just supplying the market for firearms in the friendlier venue. Yeah, four or five weapons for every man, woman, and child in that area may seem a bit excessive, but you're trying to stifle the free market and prevent people from obtaining totally legal firearms.

Big Pharma figured the same business model would work for them. Sure, thousands of people might suffer, but the drug companies' bottom line doesn't need to.

[Aristus]

4. Yeah, but I refuse the 20 year-old kid with a clean medical history and in no visible distress

when he says: "Yeah, Dude, I've got, like, 10-out-of-10 back pain and stuff, and Percocet is the only thing that works." and I get crucified.