He charged for Daniel and Peter Luger, but the incentives for doctors didn’t end with those New York restaurants.
There were fishing junkets, golf outings, and round tables at Hooters. And then there were the six-figure fees that Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp. paid to several doctors who wrote thousands of prescriptions for cardiovascular and diabetes medications the company made.
Now, after admitting that he used an extensive bribery program for nearly a decade to influence doctors to prescribe certain drugs, Novartis will pay $ 678 million to settle a fraud lawsuit, federal prosecutors in New York announced Wednesday.
Most of the medications prescribed by doctors who received bribes have been used to treat high blood pressure and include Lotrel, Diovan, Exforge, Tekturna, Valturna and Tekamlo, according to the agreement. The doctors who received the bribes also prescribed Starlix, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes.
Prosecutors said Novartis violated a federal law prohibiting bribery, leading to fraudulent prescription claims paid by Medicare, Medicaid, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The company gained an advantage over competitors, but there was no Allegations that the patients who were prescribed them did not need the medications, prosecutors said.
“For more than a decade, Novartis spent hundreds of millions of dollars on so-called speaker programs, including top-notch speaking fees, exorbitant meals, and alcohol that were nothing more than bribes for doctors across the country. Prescribing Novartis medications, Audrey Strauss, the United States ‘acting attorney general for Manhattan, said in a statement, “Giving these payments in cash and other lavish things interferes with doctors’ duty to choose the best treatment for their patients and increases drug costs for everyone. “
The settlement concluded with a 2011 whistleblower lawsuit by a former Novartis sales representative, who was joined by the federal government in 2013. It was not the first time that Novartis had been accused of giving doctors bribes. The company settled another lawsuit in 2010.
Novartis representatives said Wednesday that the company had undergone a transformation and had accepted new corporate integrity obligations in the United States until 2025. They said Novartis was moving away from the traditional speaker program model that had drawn scrutiny from federal authorities.
“Today’s agreements are consistent with Novartis’ commitment to resolve and learn from legacy compliance issues,” said Dr. Vasant Narasimhan, the company’s chief executive, in a statement. “We are a different company today, with new leadership, a stronger culture and a more comprehensive commitment to embedded ethics at the heart of our company. I’ve made it clear that I never want us to achieve business success at the expense of our values: Our values must always come first and are the foundation of everything we do. “
Prosecutors said the company, which is part of the Swiss drug maker Novartis AG, lavishes healthcare professionals with cash, food, alcohol, hotels, travel and entertainment as part of a fake speaker program that unfolded. between 2002 and 2011.
Doctors were often not required to make presentations on so-called public speaking engagements, for which they received fees, according to the agreement. There were “minimal” discussions about medicine at the events.
A doctor, who wrote more than 8,000 prescriptions for Novartis medications, received $ 320,000 in fees, according to the agreement, which did not name the doctor. Another doctor who wrote 9,000 prescriptions received $ 220,000 in fees, and a third doctor who wrote 3,600 prescriptions received more than $ 200,000.
“Novartis not only encouraged physicians to host these events to speak, representatives bribed physicians to write more prescriptions for the company’s medications to give Novartis an edge over competitors in their field,” William F. Sweeney Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a statement. “Greed replaced the responsibility that the public expects of those who practice medicine, not to mention the potential for an erosion of confidence in the pharmaceutical industry in general. This conduct was reprehensible and dishonest. “
