This business of blowing the whistle on suspected health-care fraud has become, well, big business.
Yesterday the Justice Department announceddrug maker GlaxoSmithKline would pay $750 million and plead guilty to a criminal charge to settle a probe of manufacturing deficiencies at a Glaxo plant in Puerto Rico between 2001 and 2005. Those deficiencies caused pills that split apart and led to drugs with inappropriate amounts of active ingredients, which U.S. health authorities said posed safety risks. The affected drugs included the antidepressant Paxil.
But the government isn’t the only one getting paid. Cheryl Eckard, who worked as a quality-assurance manager at Glaxo until 2003, is entitled to receive at least $96 million of the settlement because she filed a lawsuit in 2004 alleging various manufacturing problems at the company. Taxpayers Against Fraud, which tracks U.S. whistleblower activity, says it’s the highest ever amount paid to a single whistleblower as part of a government false-claims settlement. (Other whistleblowers have collected tens millions of dollars in past health-care fraud settlements, and there have even been “serial” whistleblowers who have collected rewards from more than one former employer.)
Eckard’s lawsuit was filed under a provision of the False Claims Act designed to encourage people with suspected knowledge of false government claims submission to step forward. The incentive: a cut of any resulting monetary recoveries. The lawsuits are usually filed confidentially and on behalf of the U.S. The Justice Department then has the option of taking the lead in the case, using information provided in the lawsuit, which it did in Eckard’s case.
Eckard told reporters after a Boston press conference that she took no joy in knowing it took such a case to bring the company around, but that she felt it was necessary because of the patient-safety implications. “It has been a very difficult eight years for me and my family and I’m glad and relieved that it’s over.”
Her lawyer, Neil Getnick, said Eckard raised concerns internally at Glaxo before being terminated in 2003.
Glaxo said in a written statement it regrets the way the plant was operated, and that it worked hard to fully resolve the issues before the plant was closed in 2009.
It’s relatively rare that a single person collects the entire whistleblower share of single health-care fraud settlement. Several whistleblowers split about $100 million of Eli Lilly’s $1.4 billion settlement in 2009 to resolve a probe of off-label promotion of antipsychotic Zyprexa.
One of them, a former Lilly sales rep named James Wetta, went on to work for AstraZeneca andtipped off the feds about alleged off-label promotion of antipsychotic Seroquel, resulting in Astra’s $520 million settlement in April. Wetta stood to get at least $45 million of that settlement, though he was to share an undisclosed portion with another whistleblower in that case. His attorney has declined to specify the exact amounts he received.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in May concluded that the median whistleblower recovery was about $3 million. While you might think that would explain why people step forward, the whistleblowers surveyed by the researchers said they didn’t do it for the money, and that they suffered personally for their actions. Personal integrity and public-health concerns were the main reported motivations.
1 comment:
I seriously don't care why they do it. For all I care, they can be driven purely by greed. I'm just glad they DO do it. Without them, the public would be at even greater risk.
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