Pfizer Settlement Includes Much Off-Label Promotion of Geodon and Kickbacks To Docs For Zoloft
The Geodon portion of Pfizer’s record $2.3 billion criminal and civil settlement with the Department of Justice yesterday was much larger than I’d thought. What’s more, now that details of the settlement are out, it is clear that the company was paying kickbacks to doctors to prescribe Zoloft which is the company’s now off-patent anti-depressant.
From HHS’s press release, the $1 billion combined federal and states civil settlement contains $301,462,065 attributable to illegal off-label promotion of Geodon, the company’s weak-selling antipsychotic. The painkiller Bextra made up $502,524,316 of the $1 billion, so it’s clear that Geodon was a big piece of the settlement.
Specifically, the settlement covers off-label promotion of Geodon for the following unapproved conditions:
“Depression, Bipolar maintenance, Mood disorder, Anxiety, Aggression, Dementia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Obsessive compulsive disorder, Autism, Posttraumatic stress disorder, Unapproved patient populations (including pediatric and adolescent patients), Dosages above approved maximum.”
That’s a slew of off-label marketing and it’s nonsense that it was going on. I’m not aware of any documents in the public realm related to all that activity. but if Pfizer settled claims connected with it, then you know they did it.
What’s even more impressive is that the $1 billion portion of the settlement also included $49,844,714 for paying kickbacks to health care providers in connection with the marketing of a number of other Pfizer drugs including Zoloft.
The settlement doesn’t include any sanctions against doctors who took kickbacks, but I have to question why these doctors aren’t being named and why their medical licenses aren’t in jeopardy, at a minimum.
Both Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb have in recent years settled charges brought by the Department of Justice for the illegal off-label promotion of antipsychotics. Lilly even pleaded guilty to a federal criminal misdemeanor earlier this year.
In addition to now being able to call Lilly a criminal company, we can now apply the same terminology to Pfizer, although that behavior seems to have been mostly in relation to Bextra.
I’m curious, given all this criminal behavior, as to why companies like Lilly, BMS and Pfizer as well as their lobbyists are allowed to have any role whatsoever in negotiating health care reform.
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