Former US Attorney Michael Loucks: Enhance Funding For Health Care Fraud Prosecutors

Michael K. Loucks was the US Attorney behind the largest criminal fine in the history of health care: the jaw-slacking $2.3 billion fine levied upon Pfizer (for among other things, off label promotion of Bextra and Celebrex). Regular readers will recall that this Pfizer fine grew from conduct occuring at the now non-existent legacy Pharmacia, while Fred Hassan and Carrie Cox were in the driver's seat, there. They departed Pharmacia -- offloading it to Pfizer -- just in time to avoid being dragged more deeply into Mr. Loucks' investigations. Instead, the pair conducted an encore, or repeat performance, of sorts -- at the now non-existent legacy Schering-Plough, offloading that company to Merck, last November -- and pocketing hundreds of millions, for their troubles-making.

Where was I? Oh. Right.

Now a private citizen, Mr. Loucks is free to speak his mind about what is wrong in health care generally, and pharma particularly -- and he's done so on the opinion pages of tomorrow's online edition of Business Week -- take a look; do go read it all:

. . . .Investigations of kickbacks, off-label promotion and price cheating in the drug industry are now in their 13th year. Several companies, such as Schering-Plough Corp., Pfizer and Eli Lilly & Co., have had two or more criminal or civil bouts in federal court since 1998, with gross recoveries from each company exceeding $1 billion. . . .

Additionally, it should be noted that legacy Merck has a "corporate integrity agreement" (essentially a set of conditions of agreement -- the meeting of which is designed to avoid, or defer, more substantial criminal prosecution). Between Merck and Schering-Plough, there are various new whistle-blowers' protections and duties, for all employees of New Merck, through at least the end of 2013.

Even so -- former US Attorney Loucks is absolutely right: Mr. Obama needs to continue to ensure full-funding for federal health care fraud prosecution. It is an effective deterrent.