DE pharmaceutical company fined for pushy sales tactics

A Delaware-based pharmaceutical company is the latest to get fined for inappropriately marketing a medication.

A Delaware-based pharmaceutical company is the latest to get fined for inappropriately marketing a medication. The fine is to the tune of $42-million.

Alpharma, which makes the pain killer Kadian, will pay states varying dollar amounts for its pushy sales tactics.

Pennsylvania announced this week it will receive a half million dollar piece of the pie.

Tim McCormack is an attorney with Phillips and Cohen, a firm that represented an Alpharma employee who blew the whistle on company misbehavior.

McCormack:
Unfortunately there’s a lot of money to be made in fraud and there have to be big settlements to deter that.

McCormack says the company would lean on doctors to prescribe Kadian by inviting them to advisory board meetings.

McCormack:
But in fact they were set up in such a way physicians would be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to a meeting at a resort and so really it was just a way of disguising payments to physicians.

Alpharma’s parent company did not respond to a request for comment.