Pfizer too big to prosecute?!?

Does the punishment fit the crime?

  • Yes, the world needs viagra, the government needs money, win/win.

    Votes: 1 7.1%
  • No, Bar them from participating in medicare as the law says, regardless of consequences.

    Votes: 9 64.3%
  • Ban Medicine, Jesus cures all!

    Votes: 4 28.6%

  • Total voters
    14

naterator

Bravely running away
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CNN said:
But when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail.

Why? Because any company convicted of a major health care fraud is automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid. Convicting Pfizer on Bextra would prevent the company from billing federal health programs for any of its products. It would be a corporate death sentence.

Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer's collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those of Pfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant losses for Pfizer shareholders.

"We have to ask whether by excluding the company [from Medicare and Medicaid], are we harming our patients," said Lewis Morris of the Department of Health and Human Services.

So Pfizer and the feds cut a deal. Instead of charging Pfizer with a crime, prosecutors would charge a Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc.

The CNN Special Investigation found that the subsidiary is nothing more than a shell company whose only function is to plead guilty.

According to court documents, Pfizer Inc. owns (a) Pharmacia Corp., which owns (b) Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, which owns (c) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC, which in turn owns (d) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc. It is the great-great-grandson of the parent company.

Public records show that the subsidiary was incorporated in Delaware on March 27, 2007, the same day Pfizer lawyers and federal prosecutors agreed that the company would plead guilty in a kickback case against a company Pfizer had acquired a few years earlier.

As a result, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., the subsidiary, was excluded from Medicare without ever having sold so much as a single pill. And Pfizer was free to sell its products to federally funded health programs.
the reasoning:
Prosecutors say there was no viable alternative.

"If we prosecute Pfizer, they get excluded," said Mike Loucks, the federal prosecutor who oversaw the investigation. "A lot of the people who work for the company who haven't engaged in criminal activity would get hurt."

Did the punishment fit the crime? Pfizer says yes.

It paid nearly $1.2 billion in a criminal fine for Bextra, the largest fine the federal government has ever collected.

It paid a billion dollars more to settle a batch of civil suits -- although it denied wrongdoing -- on allegations that it illegally promoted 12 other drugs.

In all, Pfizer lost the equivalent of three months' profit.

It maintained its ability to do business with the federal government.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra/

So what do you think? Creative way to mete punishment without undue consequences for the general public? Or Corporate ownership of government that pushes us closer to the brink?
 
I say let the company fall. Sends a message to everyone else. At the same time fine it a large amount, and direct that money towards stimulus projects in the places that will get hurt the most by it's collapse.
 
Jail the directors. Fine and penalize the company. NOBODY is above the law. Least of all a "big" company.
 
Corporation- n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual wealth without individual responsibility.

They can get away with anything. But since corporations are legally people:)mad::mad::mad::mad:), shouldn't the corporation be arrested for its crime? And if it is convicted, shouldn't the entire corporation go to jail? This "corporations are people" BS should cut both ways.
 
My sister works for Pfizer
 
Seems pretty reasonable; Prosecution should be in the 'public interest' and all. A couple billion dollars in payment seems message enough.
 
My sister works for Pfizer

I briefly worked at GSK - I say let the bastards fall. There are plenty of small, more respectable pharma companies out there.
 
Decide on a fine size, take that amount of money out in the form of stock, distribute among the affected.
 
Don't charge the company with fraud, charge the crooks in the company with fraud.

If a corporation has first amandment rights as a legal person it should also be prosecuted as a legal person.
 
any company convicted of a major health care fraud is automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid.

A bit extreme. Such a hefty fine ($2.2B) for one drug alone is fair punishment. Maybe up the fine proportion.
 
Consistency.
Corporations get treated like sinlge entities instead of a collection of people all the time.
So then should corporations be able to apply for food stamps or obtain a driver's license?

Corporations are treated as people under certain circumstances, and not treated as people other under. I see little compelling reason that they should be treated as people as valid targets for criminal prosecution.
 
I see plenty of reason. They can get away with anything while people (unless they're rich) can't. They can effectively control the government by filling it with their lobbyists and ex-employees, paying billions upon billions on lobbying and bribes, and now, paying limitless amounts of money on political campaigns so that the entire government is composed of fat corporate whores. However, the law doesn't apply to them as much as it does to ordinary people because they're rich. Shouldn't they be severely punished for the crimes they commit? SCOTUS says they're people, after all, and people are answerable to the law.
 
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