Forbes Magazine has reported that the Department of Health and Human Services recovered $4 billion from healthcare fraud cases, and that pharmaceutical corporations swindled half that amount.

Some examples from the past year in drug crime and civil wrongdoing of the corporate variety –

Fortune 500 company, Allergan, (AGN) paid the government $600 million to settle criminal and civil charges arising from the company selling their Botox product as a remedy for headaches – despite forgetting to get FDA approval to do so.

Novartis (NVS) coughed up $422.5 million to get rid of criminal and civil liability problems for illegally marketing some of their products.

AstaZeneca (AZN) kicked in $520 million for marketing an anti-psychotic drug for uses not approved by the FDA and for paying kickbacks to doctors.

Read the rest of the article by clicking here. A big reason why Americans pay the most in the world for health care – aside from the for-profit health insurance industry – is the runaway cost of prescription drugs. Unless and until the executives do some hard prison time, and regulations on the drug industry are tightened, slapping millions of dollars in fines against companies that make billions in profit each year isn’t going to stop them from picking Americans’ pockets.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org