Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Here We Go Again, with the Form

According to several press accounts such as:
http://www.startribune.com/local/135475788.html
--we can go back to our standard form and fill in the blanks (except to substitute devices for the usual 'drugs'):

Company: Medtronic
Devices: defibrillators and pacemakers
Settled Federal charges of: paying kickbacks to docs for using their brand of device ($1-2K per implantation)
Fine paid: $23.5M
Fine as % of Annual Sales during Peak Year: 0.4%
Company Admits Guilt?: Of course not

I calculated the percentage of sales based on last year's sales figures reported by the company of $16B, and their statement that 31% of their business involves cardiac rhythm devices.

As we have seen recently (e.g., http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2011/11/back-to-standard-form-again-merck.html) if anything, the trend within the drug industry has been for more substantial fines, so the pittance the Feds collected in this case seems a major step backward.

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