10 healthcare names get Shkreli Awards for bad behavior
By Admin | January 10, 2023
No one in healthcare aspires to win an award named after a "pharma bro."
But that's exactly where 10 individuals and organizations find themselves with the release of Lown Institute's 6th Annual Shkreli Awards. The list contains the "worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare" ultimately decided by a panel of 18 judges who are patient activists, clinicians, health policy experts and journalists. The awards and vetting system are organized by Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that measures hospitals' and health systems' social responsibility.
Martin Shkreli earned the nickname of pharma bro when, in 2015, his company Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired a 62-year-old drug called Daraprim and, overnight, increased the price from about $13.50 per pill to $750. In 2017, Mr. Shkreli was convicted in federal court on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud, resulting in a 2018 sentence of seven years in prison. In 2022, a federal judge ordered Mr. Shkreli to pay $64 million for hiking the price of Daraprim and permanently banned him from serving as an executive or director at a public company in addition to a lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry.
"If we're ever going to get to the great health system that Americans deserve, we have to call out bad behavior," Vikas Saini, MD, president of the Lown Institute, said. "The Shkreli Awards are a mirror that's hard to look into, but we've got to do it."
Below are the recipients of the 2022 Shkreli Award, as decided by the Lown Institute.
1. Insurers that systematically manipulate Medicare Advantage. The majority of large Medicare Advantage insurers face accusations of fraud or overbilling by the U.S. government, resulting in alleged overpayments estimated to cost taxpayers up to $25 billion in 2020, The New York Times reported in October 2022. Of the top 10 Medicare Advantage providers by market share, the following have been accused of fraud or overbilling by...(More)
For more info please read, 10 healthcare names get Shkreli Awards for bad behavior, by Becker's Hospital Review
