The St. Petersburg times has run a thorough and convincing article on the amount of fraud in promoting the use of atypical antipsychotics in the psychiatric community. Courtesy of Clinical Psychology… and Furious Seasons. Some important financial points:
- Atypicals can cost up to 20 times as much as the old medications
- This because the drugs are new, patented — “exceptionally expensive”.
- Taxpayers, in Florida alone, spent more than 1.1 billion dollars on atypical antipsychotics.
- To recover Medicaid funds, nine states have sued Eli Lilly. Two have sued AstraZeneca. And “Dozens more states have teamed in a joint investigation, seeking billions of dollars in restitution for money they say they overpaid for atypicals through Medicaid.”
And that doesn’t even cover other disturbing elements in the story:
- The extensive financial influence of Big Pharma on marketing these drugs.
- Nor does it cover the lawsuits relating to side effects.
- Nor does it cover Big Pharma’s role in setting up state guidelines for prescription practices.
More on these aspects of the St. Petersburg article in upcoming posts.
If that piqued your interest, please click on the technorati button.
Kalea Chapman, Psy.D.
