The Answer is Blowing In The Wind

Great summary from Roy Blount, III at Health Plan Law on the implications of Fraud Lawsuits against Pharamaceutical Companies for Health Care Reform here.

In this recent opinion, the district court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, thus permitting the plaintiff-relator’s case to go forward on all but one count of California’s False Claims Act. This case serves to illustrate several points.

First, it provides an overview of how state False Claims Act statutes may be employed to challenge costs imposed on Medicaid programs.

Second, the case serves as an object example of why specific attention to pharmaceutical company business practices must be a central component of any serious health care reform proposal.

Third, the case sheds light on the often clandestine profit vectors associated with the sale of pharmaceuticals.

Throw in a presidential election year, the volatility of seniors discovering their Medicare dough nut hole and 2008 could see the brushfire threaten the ammo dump that is the pharma-industrial complex not to mention the powder keg of health care reform in the employer sector as Hillarycare II gets under way. There are Santa Ana winds heading for this little brushfire.