"14 executives, staff charged in tainted drug case; Counts include murder and conspiracy as fallout grows from deaths of 64" by Kay Lazar and Todd Wallack, Globe Staff December 17, 2014
Law enforcement agents swooped in during predawn raids Wednesday and arrested executives and former staffers of a Framingham compounding pharmacy blamed for producing tainted drugs that killed dozens in one of the deadliest medication contamination cases in US history.
In all, 14 people were charged in connection with the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak linked to the shuttered New England Compounding Center. Contaminated drugs — produced with expired ingredients under unsterile conditions — have been tied to the deaths of 64 people and to illnesses in about 700 patients in 20 states.
And yet this state is all tied up over medical marijuana clinics (cough).
The company’s co-owner and head pharmacist, Barry Cadden, and its supervisory pharmacist, Glenn Chin, were charged with 25 acts of second-degree murder in seven states, plus additional crimes.
See: Posted by the Hair of My Chinny Chin China
The other dozen defendants, including six of the company’s pharmacists, its national sales director, and another co-owner, face charges including racketeering, mail fraud, conspiracy, and contempt.
Some defendants could face life in prison. Prosecutors called the case an “unprecedented” national tragedy, and the indictments ended two years of waiting for patients and families desperate for justice.
They have a separate article below.
“Production and profit were prioritized over safety,” US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said during a packed news conference in her offices at the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse in South Boston.
Happens all the time. This just went wrong.
The indictment alleges that New England Compounding and Medical Sales Management Inc. — a company that shared ownership with NECC and provided it with sales and administrative services — constituted a criminal “enterprise” under the federal racketeering law.
“Let me be clear: Actions like the ones alleged in this case display not only a reckless disregard for federal health and safety regulations but also an extreme and appalling indifference for human life,” acting US Associate Attorney General Stuart Delery said.
The deaths and illnesses spurred the administration of Governor Deval Patrick to tighten oversight of compounding pharmacies.
Several of those charged pleaded not guilty in court sessions Wednesday afternoon. An attorney for one of the defendants told a judge his client would be exonerated.
As early as January 2008, Cadden, Chin, and other staffers devised a scheme to defraud patients by using expired ingredients to make drugs and then mixing them with other substances to conceal their actions, the indictment alleges.
Company officials and staffers knew bacterial and mold contamination proliferated in their lab’s “clean rooms,” where drugs purporting to be sterile were produced, prosecutors said. And they failed to conduct tests to ensure medicine produced in those rooms was sterile, prosecutors charge.
Yet the company continued to send out quarterly “Quality Assurance” reports to hospitals and doctors in the months leading up to the 2012 meningitis outbreak touting sterile labs, the indictment says.
To cover their tracks, supervisory pharmacist Chin instructed pharmacists to fraudulently complete logs at the end of each month purporting to show that the labs were properly cleaned and disinfected, according to the indictment.
From May 2012 through Sept. 25, 2012, roughly 17,300 vials of methylprednisolone acetate, a steroid commonly injected into a patient’s spine to quell back pain, were prepared in the company’s contaminated labs and shipped to customers across the country, the indictment states.
“When we take an item off the shelf at a drug store or grocery store, or visit a doctor for treatment, we don’t think we are putting our health at risk, and we shouldn’t have to,” said acting Assistant Attorney General Joyce Branda, who also attended Wednesday’s news conference. “These are everyday activities, not Russian roulette.”
Gregory Conigliaro, another owner of the company who faces charges, conspired with Cadden to deliberately mislead federal drug regulators since at least 1998 by falsely identifying the company only as a compounding pharmacy, not a drug manufacturer, prosecutors allege.
As a drug manufacturer, the company would have faced greater federal scrutiny of its operations.
After the fact.
“We are a small-scale, family-run compounding-only pharmacy,’’ Conigliaro wrote to the US Food and Drug Administration in 2004, according to the indictment. Conigliaro told regulators that as such a company, it was not subject to manufacturing standards set by the FDA.
Conigliaro and Cadden also are accused of conspiring to direct employees to falsify records. In order to operate as a compounding pharmacy, rather than a manufacturer, the company needed to make drugs for specific patients. So company officials allegedly instructed workers to create fake patient names, including those of celebrities, such as David Letterman, Robert Redford, and Chris Rock.
The Rock was just shattered!
In June 2012, after consulting with Cadden, Conigliaro ordered staff to create 300 fraudulent prescriptions for patients at a Massachusetts hospital, the indictment alleges.
Related:
"They used outlandish fake names — including those of celebrities and fictional characters like Method Man, Wonder Woman, Tyler Perry, Bud Weiser, David Letterman, Ned Flanders, Burt Reynolds, Betty Ford, and “Chester Cheeto”— to justify the bulk production of some drugs."
Cadden’s attorney, Bruce Singal, said his client had been expecting the indictment on a Wednesday morning for some time, and for several consecutive weeks had been waking at 4 a.m. Wednesdays, dressing and waiting for federal agents to descend.
Oh, the poor bastard!
See: Co-owner of pharmacy in deadly outbreak pleads not guilty
At the same time he "made $62 million from 2010 to 2012 while routinely flouting federal safety regulations."
Or not.
He told Chief Magistrate Judge Jennifer C. Boal that his client posed “no risk of flight or dangerousness,” emphasizing that he has three children, including two in high school.
Singal also said that Cadden is “looking forward to his day in court” and that he will be proven not guilty.
Cadden appeared in a button-down shirt, but co-defendant Chin, wearing a faded New England Patriots shirt and what appeared to be pajama bottoms, looked like he was rousted from bed.
His attorney, Stephen Weymouth, said Wednesday’s raid came out of the blue, because Chin was already under curfew and being monitored by the court.
Chin was arraigned in September after being arrested several days earlier at Logan Airport as he and his family prepared to board a flight to Hong Kong.
His lawyer said Chin was not trying to flee but was instead traveling with his family for a vacation.
Boal scheduled another detention hearing for Thursday to decide whether to continue holding Cadden and Chin.
Company co-owner Conigliaro was released on $25,000 unsecured bond, with travel restrictions.
The court hearings Wednesday revealed that several other former company staffers, including Kathy Chin, a pharmacist, and Robert Ronzio, the former national sales director, still work in the pharmaceutical industry.
New England Compounding and its related company, Medical Sales Management, were privately held by Cadden and his wife and by Conigliaro and members of his family, the indictment said.
Conigliaro’s brother, Douglas, and Douglas’s wife, Carla, face multiple counts of criminal contempt for transferring $33.3 million in cash from various bank accounts when US Bankruptcy Court Judge Henry J. Boroff issued an order freezing their assets in early 2013.
The order came amid a flood of lawsuits filed on behalf of patients sickened in the outbreak.
In one day alone, authorities allege, the Conigliaros transferred $13.5 million from a New York financial institution to two banks, headquartered in Texas and Georgia.
Douglas and Carla Conigliaro pleaded not guilty in court Wednesday, Carla barely audible as she rested her hands against the courtroom table aside her lawyer.
Wednesday’s criminal charges follow recent progress on the civil litigation spawned by the wave of deaths.
Earlier this month, a proposal filed in federal bankruptcy court called for at least $135 million to be distributed to people who have brought personal injury or death claims against the pharmacy, according to the trustee for New England Compounding’s bankruptcy filing and lawyers advising victims and their families.
That's all?
About 3,500 victims and their families have filed claims with the bankruptcy court.
Ortiz, the US attorney, said her team has spent the past two years speaking with families and patients nationwide and listening to their horrific experiences.
Their stories “are why we have been working so tirelessly in our pursuit of justice,” Ortiz said. “In many ways, I have been frustrated by how long it’s taken. But we wanted to make sure we got it right.”
Tell it to Swartz's parents.
--more--"
"Charges in pharmacy case indicate US sees crime ring; Prosecutors must show pattern and intent, analysts say" by Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff December 18, 2014
Federal prosecutors allege that the pharmacists who ran the New England Compounding Center essentially ran the company like a criminal enterprise, engaging in a conspiracy to defraud customers with shoddy work that they knew could lead to deaths, according to several Boston lawyers’ legal analysis of the 73-page indictment handed out Wednesday.
Their problem was they were not big enough to be too big to jail.
By alleging racketeering, the prosecutors say they will show that the licensed pharmacists knew they were violating federal regulations but that they engaged in fraud to aid the goals of their crime ring, the legal analysts said.
“The prosecutors are alleging that these employees and officers engaged in a pattern of criminal activity, in which consumers and customers were defrauded by a series of false representations,” said Brad Bailey, a former federal prosecutor who recently represented one of the former probation department deputies convicted in a racketeering trial.
Mortgage-backed securities.
Now it is rents and auto insurance.
Bailey said some of the legal issues raised in the probation department trial, and which are now being appealed, could also be presented in the New England Compounding Center case: Can prosecutors show that people who were part of a corporation were running that corporation like a crime ring?
The CEO is the godfather figure.
“It’s going to be fact-intensive, and a jury will have to determine whether [prosecutors] do have all the facts to prove racketeering,” said Brian Kelly, the former head of the public corruption unit of the US attorney’s office in Boston. Kelly now works for Nixon Peabody.
The officials charged Wednesday from New England Compounding Center, or NECC, include executives and supervisory pharmacists who were accused of selling tainted drugs to hospitals, doctors, and patients. Prosecutors said the drugs led to a meningitis outbreak that affected hundreds and killed dozens.
Same as a crime ring.
Of the 14 people indicted Wednesday, eight were charged with racketeering conspiracy, meaning they were accused of running NECC as a criminal organization.
See: NECC pharmacists are put under house arrest
To prove that charge, according to legal analysts, prosecutors will have to show that there was an agreement to commit crimes, that the participants knew they were crimes, and that those crimes aided the goals of the criminal organization. The prosecutors would also have to show that there was a pattern of crimes over a period of time.
Good luck!
In the indictment Wednesday, prosecutors allege that the defendants committed fraud by falsely claiming that they followed proper rules and procedures in the process to sterilize pharmaceuticals and falsely claimed that they had tested the drugs to make sure they were properly sterilized.
Specifically, the company was producing a tainted form of a sterile steroid, even though supervisors knew that the process of creating sterile drugs “posed the greatest threat to patients because, among other things, it required compounding personnel to sterilize non-sterile ingredients,” according to the indictment.
Two of the defendants face allegations that their crimes resulted in murder.
Bailey questioned whether prosecutors will be able to show that the alleged crimes constituted a conspiracy and said the remaining defendants will work to separate themselves from the murder allegations, saying that being associated with the murder defendants “would result in an unfair trial.”
He and other legal analysts noted that some of the charges in the 130-count indictment are not related to the meningitis outbreak. Two executives, for instance, are charged with criminal contempt for violating a bankruptcy judge’s order to freeze their assets and for structuring bank transactions to avoid federal detection.
Several other executives and pharmacists are also accused of defrauding the US Food and Drug Administration for claiming they were pharmacists who filled prescriptions, while they were instead working like a drug manufacturer.
A drug manufacturer would be subjected to greater FDA scrutiny.
Kelly said that defense lawyers might seek to have some of the charges separated from the core racketeering case, possibly in a separate trial.
Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said prosecutors seemed to have ensnared everyone involved, even those to a lesser degree, and he questioned whether all the defendants will go to trial.
He also said that prosecutors appear to be trying to send a message to the defendants and others who work in the health care field with the sweeping indictment that includes charges of murder.
“There is a message they are sending to other organizations and other employees, specifically those working in public care, and the message is, ‘you have to tread carefully,’ ” Medwed said. “If you’re producing items that affect the public welfare, you should be held accountable.”
--more--"
What do the victims have to say?
"Victims of meningitis outbreak welcome criminal charges" by Peter Schworm and Patricia Wen, Globe Staff December 18, 2014
Two years ago, Diana Rohrer-Kuhn lost her only sibling, 68-year-old Daniel Rohrer, to the contaminated medication he received from New England Compounding Center. On Wednesday, upon learning that the owners and top staff at the Framingham pharmacy had been arrested on criminal charges, she expressed a measure of satisfaction and renewed hope that a prison sentence would someday follow.
“They deliberately sold a product that was tainted,” said Rohrer-Kuhn, who lives in Bremen, Ind. “I want them to serve time.”
Revenge is sweet!
It was a sentiment shared by other victims and their relatives as federal officials announced that 14 people face charges for their alleged role in a deadly meningitis outbreak linked to the company’s steroids. The injured and their kin said the executives deserved to be held accountable for their actions, which authorities said resulted in 64 deaths and hundreds of illnesses.
An eye for an eye!
The sight of the owners being led away by law enforcement, Rohrer-Kuhn said, was deeply gratifying.
“It’s been two years, and at least we all weren’t forgotten,” she said. “People have to realize that people died.”
Which is why I'm still unhappy. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Rove, never in shackles. Bankers bound free with bonuses in hand.
Her brother, who lived in Bristol, Ind., and ran a lawn-care business, left behind a wife, three children, and three grandchildren. They have struggled financially in his absence but have yet to see a payout from legal action brought against the company by the victims’ families.
In Michigan, Kathy Pugh said her mother, who developed an infection after taking tainted medication, was pleased criminal charges had finally been brought.
“She’s happy the charges were made,” Pugh said. “She’ll be happier when they’re convicted.”
Pugh said her mother, Evelyn March, received an injection for a back ailment in 2012 but developed an infection and had to be hospitalized for three weeks.
Her mother has never fully recovered, Pugh said. She needs a walker or wheelchair to get around and requires personal care. Pugh had to quit her job to look after her mother.
“It’s getting harder and harder for her,” she said. “Our lives will never be the same.”
That says it all, and sums up the vitriolic rage here the last eight years.
Thankfully, it's all ending. I'm getting out of the blogging business.
Pugh read the detailed indictment Wednesday and said she was struck by the scope and severity of the allegations.
“They were either that stupid or that arrogant,” she said. “It floors me.”
It no longer does me. That';s the problem, and why I'm done.
Kimberly Dougherty, an attorney who represents 100 patients and their families affected by the fungal meningitis outbreak, said one of her clients suffered an agonizing death two weeks ago.
He was from Michigan and owned an auto body shop before developing the meningitis, she said.
“He didn’t get to see this day,” she said.
Patients have been waiting a long time, wondering when this day would come as they watched the defendants continue to lead “lavish” lifestyles, she said.
Under terms of a recently filed proposal, a victims compensation fund could grow to $135 million. The agreement is subject to a judge’s approval.
Marsha Martin, whose 89-year-old mother died from the contaminated drugs, was pleased to hear about the charges but said they can’t make up for what happened.
“It doesn’t fix anything,” Martin said from her home in Bristol, Ind.
No, when people die nothing makes up for it. That is why I'm against the death penalty.
She and her four siblings don’t expect much financial compensation for the death of their mother, Pauline Burema, who lived in Cassopolis, Mich., Martin said. They realize, she said, that their mother was close to nine decades old and that her death did not result in financial hardship for the family.
No one will get much, not when you do the math.
But she said her mother’s loss was felt deeply by many in the family. Burema was healthy and vibrant and enjoyed her extended family, with a dozen grandchildren and some two dozen great-grandchildren. If prosecutors show that Burema’s death and others were caused by “gross negligence” by executives, her daughter said, she hopes the executives spend years paying for their crimes.
“If they knew the drugs were contaminated, they belong behind bars,” she said.
Ruby Steiner said her mother — 87-year-old Viola Copsey from Constantine, Mich. — died two months after being injected with New England Compounding steroids to treat chronic severe back pain. Steiner said the owners and top executives at the company need to be held responsible and not just by being forced to pay compensation.
“They should pay with prison time,” said Steiner, who lived near her mother.
The steroids initially made her mother feel better, but within two weeks she fell ill and never recovered. Steiner and her three siblings try to honor the anniversary of their mother’s death in special ways. Her sister makes batches of cookies, like their mother used to.
--more--"
Even murderers have their defenders:
"Groups unite against curbing painkillers; Industry, doctors, patients lobby over opiate laws" by Christopher Rowland, Globe Staff December 29, 2014
Not everyone cheered Massachusetts state senators this year when they tried to strike a blow against an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse and overdose deaths.
In some quarters, it was seen as an affront.
“MA state senators’ message is clear to MA residents living with pain . . . we don’t care about you!” tweeted Cindy Steinberg, an advocate for patients who depend on prescription opiates to manage pain.
These drugs taste bad.
A frequent presence in Washington and on Beacon Hill, Steinberg has deep knowledge of prescription narcotic regulations and a certain personal credibility. To relieve her own severe back pain, the result of an office accident in the 1990s, she lies flat on her back during legislative hearings.
Steinberg’s reaction to this year’s Massachusetts Senate bill captured the emotional core of lobbying campaigns against strict curbs on opiate prescribing, both nationally and in state capitals. Those campaigns are funded in part by drug makers.
Their message: Don’t punish millions of legitimate pain patients in the rush to reduce prescription opiate addiction.
I actually agree. What happens is the over-prescriptions lead to under-prescriptions for those who truly need it.
The industry is working to protect its US market for oxycodone, hydrocodone, and similar drugs, which reached $8.3 billion in 2013. Its opposition to stricter access restrictions on its drugs is often echoed by a network of allies, including industry-backed patient groups such as the US Pain Foundation, where Steinberg is the national policy and advocacy director.
Locally, Steinberg has teamed with another powerful organization that also opposes some of the strictest narcotic prescribing proposals: the Massachusetts Medical Society, which represents the state’s physicians.
This sort of organized resistance from the patient and medical community frustrates elected leaders and public health officials who are trying to devise measures to curb a wave of narcotic painkiller abuse and overdoses that claimed 16,500 lives across the country in 2010.
Until the next campaign check or donation is cashed.
“There’s an imbalance, an unevenness in the view of the benefits of these products versus the dangers,” said Representative Bill Keating, the Bourne Democrat who has introduced a bill in Congress to require that opiate pills be manufactured in a way that makes them difficult to crush and then snort or inject.
“What about the pain of someone’s spouse or loved one or daughter, and they are dead? That is a pain that doesn’t go away,” Keating said.
Law enforcement leaders say prescription opiates serve as a gateway to heroin, which has been responsible for a shocking surge in deaths in New England recently. Massachusetts alone experienced 58 heroin overdose deaths in the first half of December, State Police said.
They are absolutely right there.
To be sure, drug companies and advocacy groups recognize the serious toll of addiction and strongly support a variety of measures to fight it.
Who ever doubted it?(Just employing the phrase reveals it)
For example, they favor the expenditure of public funds for treatment programs and physician education on the warning signs of abuse. They also support greater availability of emergency drugs that can save people who have overdosed. They favor abuse-resistant pills, which are difficult for addicts to crush.
The groups also broadly support prescription drug monitoring programs that allow doctors and pharmacists to check computer networks, which can reveal whether patients are getting multiple prescriptions from different providers, a typical indication of abuse.
But there is disagreement about how often doctors should be required to log on and do searches on those computers. The state Senate and the state Department of Public Health in 2014 proposed making the checks mandatory and more frequent.
Steinberg, however, said those measures unfairly penalize patients who are in pain by adding hurdles to access.
“That side of things has been so overlooked in this frenzy of abuse and overdoses,” Steinberg said. “Everyone has forgotten all these millions of Americans who are living with pain.”
When she is not flat on her back, Steinberg is making YouTube videos, writing letters to public officials, or e-mailing pain patients around the country. She is the public face of a local volunteer group called the Massachusetts Pain Initiative.
She also is a leader of the US Pain Foundation, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that received 87 percent of its $250,000 budget from prescription drug companies in 2012. Steinberg was paid $6,480 by the US Pain Foundation in 2012 for her role, according to tax records. She received the same amount from the group in 2013.
That's not much at all (maybe she gets free drugs).
The US Pain Foundation, in turn, is one of a handful of industry-funded groups seeking to influence state and Washington policy makers. Most of the organizations disclose that they receive money from drug companies, but they stop short of disclosing amounts.
Steinberg said the payments she receives from the US Pain Foundation do not influence the positions she takes as a volunteer advocate speaking to lawmakers and public officials: “Am I motivated because a pharmaceutical company told me to say anything? No.”
But critics say industry-funded influence on both government and the medical community has had a profound effect on the prescription drug crisis in New England and across the United States, fueling overprescribing of addictive drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, a nonprofit group, would not name specific organizations but said the debate has been heavily influenced by “front groups” that “exist to take money from industry and [that] service industry needs.”
********************
The prescription painkiller industry received a black eye in 2007 when Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and three of its executives pleaded guilty to misleading regulators and physicians about the addictive qualities of the drug. The company paid a $600 million penalty.
That did not end controversy surrounding the expansive market penetration of potent pain pills. The city of Chicago this year filed a detailed civil lawsuit alleging deceptive marketing practices by Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, and other prescription opiate manufacturers.
Would that be Teva Pharmaceutical of Israel?
The suit alleges that companies worked closely with a variety of nonprofit groups and allied physicians, despite the hazards of addiction, to dramatically boost painkiller prescribing in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Teva Pharmaceutical declined to comment on the lawsuit. Purdue Pharma dismissed its effects.
“As widely documented, these lawsuits are designed to enrich trial attorneys, not improve public health,” Purdue Pharma said in a statement.
“Purdue actively discourages the misprescribing and overprescribing of our medications,” it added. In addition to partnering with patient advocacy groups, it said, it also has joined law enforcement officials and addiction experts to combat abuse.
The wave of opiate addiction in the last decade is undeniable. As stated in the Chicago lawsuit, a key turning point came in 2000, when, with the backing of an industry-funded study group in Wisconsin, the organization that accredits US hospitals recognized pain as the “Fifth Vital Sign” that should be treated aggressively.
That change dovetails with another recent trend. Patients now are routinely asked to rate hospitals and physicians on, among other things, how well they treat pain. Under new pay-for-performance compensation systems for doctors and hospitals, those ratings are used to help calculate compensation.
The upshot is doctors’ paychecks are being affected by whether or not they prescribe pain pills, said Cheryl Bartlett, who was the Massachusetts commissioner of public health until this month.
“People are saying their child is going in for a sore throat and getting a narcotic pain prescription. People are going in for a routine dental extraction and getting a 30-day supply of a narcotic,” Bartlett said.
I never did.
Specialists say some of those patients have a genetic predisposition to addiction and get hooked on the pills. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates prescription drug abuse costs have soared to about $72 billion a year.
“It’s a scary combination of things that have taken us to a place that it is really overwhelming our health care system,” said Bartlett, whose agency proposed mandates on prescribing physicians similar to the Senate’s.
But such restrictions go against the grain for many doctors who say they know what’s best for their patients. Even doctors who battle addiction on the front lines of the epidemic don’t believe physicians should be required to frequently check medication histories of their patients.
“I don’t think you can put all of the onus on doctors. There are pill mills, but for the majority of the doctors, it’s not going to turn out they are the problem,” said Dr. Edward Bernstein, an expert on addiction who coordinates substance abuse treatment and referrals in the emergency room at Boston Medical Center. “That is what we went into medicine for, to alleviate pain and suffering.”
With her own tale of persistent pain, Steinberg, a resident of Lexington, is a dramatic spokeswoman for her side of the debate. The former technology executive suffered nerve and ligament damage in 1995 when, in her office near Harvard Square, she was struck by a toppling file cabinet. It left her with debilitating back pain; prescription opiates, non-narcotic drugs, and physical therapy helped ease the pain, but it has never gone away completely.
Her odyssey opened her eyes to another problem: Patients complaining of pain are often not believed by doctors. She started a support group in her local library. She became an activist for better access to pain drugs.
******************
Steinberg also publicly opposed Governor Deval Patrick’s ban this year on Zohydro, a high-dose hydrocodone drug that was approved by the FDA over furious objections from addiction specialists and despite a negative recommendation from its own advisory panel. Patrick’s decision was promptly overturned by a US District Court judge.
It will be a little discussed aspect of his woeful legacy.
In September, Steinberg participated in a “Chronic Pain Community Expert Roundtable” conference call sponsored by Zohydro’s manufacturer, Zogenix, describing the negative experiences of patients with pain. She said she received no compensation. The US Pain Foundation said it received about $6,000 in 2014 from Zogenix.
After the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed its bill to crack down on opiate abuse in May, the measure went to the House, where Steinberg said she and the Massachusetts Medical Society lobbied to soften some of its provisions.
“We believed the initial drafts of the [prescription monitoring program] legislation were overly broad and would have impeded seriously ill patients from receiving adequate medications in a timely fashion,” the Medical Society said in a statement. It said it has always broadly supported the monitoring program since its inception in 1992.
Representative Elizabeth A. Malia of Jamaica Plain, chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, was among House lawmakers who recognized those concerns. When the House bill emerged in the summer, requirements that insurance companies pay for treatment remained. The mandate that doctors regularly check their patients’ prescription histories for signs of abuse was gone.
“There was a lot of discussion about that, to not make that more difficult for people who have legitimate need to get the meds,” Malia said.
Those changes were part of the final bill that passed and was signed by Patrick.
The debate promises to continue. Governor-elect Charlie Baker, in a post-election interview with the Globe last month, said targeting prescription opiate abuse will be a major priority during the first six months of his administration. He said he was shocked that a doctor prescribed narcotic painkillers for his son after he broke his arm playing football. Baker said during his campaign that he supported a mandate that prescribers check prescription histories of their opiate patients annually.
I wish him well, I really do.
The new governor can expect Cindy Steinberg to chime in. In fact, she already has, responding to Baker’s remarks in the Globe with a detailed post on public radio station WBUR’s website.
“What are people with pain supposed to do?” Steinberg told the Globe in an interview last week. “All they are asking is to be included in the conversation.”
Palestinians?
--more--"
I suppose if Johns Hopkins make make a mistake, anyone can.
Time to fill that prescription:
"Stronger sales at established stores helped Walgreen Co. trump expectations. Earnings of $809 million in the quarter ended Nov. 30 were up 16 percent from a year earlier. Revenue rose nearly 7 percent to $19.55 billion. The largest US drugstore chain also said a major acquisition that is expected to strengthen its global reach and buying clout should close next week. Analysts and investors say Walgreen will gain negotiating muscle with the purchase and another ownership stake it acquired in the pharmaceutical wholesaler AmerisourceBergen."
Refill: Walgreens Pre$cription
