When looking at all the fines that Big Pharma is absorbing -- primarily for violations of selling and marketing regulations around the world -- did you ever find yourself saying "ho-hum" business as usual. Especially when the fines involved are much less than $1 B! I do.
Just this week Pharmalot reported fines for Lilly ($29 M), Sanofi ($109 M) and Amgen ($762 M). The Amgen is big enough for me to take more notice but the others -- "ho-hum". That's kind of sad.
These pale next to some of the multi-billion dollar settlements we've seen in the past two years as well.
Posted by Bruce Lehr Dec 20th 2012.
I think part of the US government have questioned whether fines actually change the behaviour of big pharma. I'm sure someone in each big pharma company does the sums on the risk of being fined, how much it will be and when it will happen, before they proceed to do what they do. Apart from the fine itself the companies do not seem to be affected much by it. Fines do not seem to impact their reputation as a whole, and investors/shareholders don't seem to mind.
Posted by: Suleman | 12/21/2012 at 04:31 AM