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go_berds t1_j29cqp3 wrote

Good. It’s a shame the worst punishment will just be a fine that pales in comparison to the amount of money they made on these sales

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outerspace29 t1_j29digz wrote

Punish them by making them relocate HQ to Philadelphia and contribute to the tax base

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porkchameleon t1_j29jwua wrote

Replying to signedpants (#1,186,795)

Precisely.

Everyone is chasing money, give me a break about "it's time for those victims to get some justice".

If feds meant serious business about this "epidemic", they would had gone full blown Duterte on them mamajammas.

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Proper-Code7794 t1_j29k70q wrote

Yep we can trace their chemicals all the way back to the forests

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powersurge t1_j29uez2 wrote

AmerisourceBergen is the largest company by revenue (not including government, university or hospitals) in Pennsylvania and one of the big three of the pharmaceutical distributors. It will be interesting to see why the DoJ is singling out this company from the other two larger distributors.

I project that just like AmerisourceBergen is accused of here, all three of the big distributors have just been refusing to take any responsibility for what they do: drug distribution. They think that all they need to do is report some of their data to the government when the government requests it. Never do these corporations wonder, "why do we need a distributor between the pharmaceutical and the pharmacy/hospital" at all. Unless they are forced by the government to take some responsibility, they just won't, even in the face of tens of thousands of dead Americans every year.

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HoagiesDad t1_j2a4u5t wrote

I always wonder where the money from these suits ends up. I’m sure very little goes to help the people with addiction or the cities trying to cope with homelessness and the crimes surrounding addiction. It mainly goes in the pockets of lawyers

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Live_For_Love t1_j2a5y28 wrote

Guess who will suffer now? Pain patients who can’t get adequate medical care.

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OprahtheHutt t1_j2ajo0o wrote

They bear no responsibility for the opioid crisis. They were filling orders by pharmacies that could order narcotics. The pharmacies were filling legal prescriptions.

The other two of the big three already settled several years ago with the Feds. Neither admitted to any wrongdoing (nor should they have).

This is just another shakedown by the government. The government will not fix the problem so they always look to pass the blame.

If the distribution of legal opioids were the problem, then why have opioid deaths increased since 2014 while total opioid prescriptions have significantly decreased? Illegal opioids are the problem and government isn’t doing their job to curtail them.

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BenFranklinBuiltUs t1_j2aotaz wrote

They will pay a $10,000 dollar fine on the $100,000,000 they made and that will really teach them a lesson!

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ForkBombGoBoom t1_j2arobm wrote

Replying to powersurge (#1,189,624)

Without distributors, patients who are prescribed medicine can't get it. They vet pharmacies and report suspicious transactions to the DEA, and severed relationships with 4 of the 5 pharmacies the DEA cited. This is accordance with federal law. What more should they have done?

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CountryGuy123 t1_j2atdvu wrote

So Amerisource is a distributor, they don't prescribe medications. The opioids in question have important medical use.

What exactly were they supposed to do differently? Genuine question.

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powersurge t1_j2b6o52 wrote

Replying to ForkBombGoBoom (#1,197,593)

AmerisourceBergen surely has a role to play here. They distributed to pharmacies and towns enough at times to give each resident of the town like a 100 pills. I expect a corporation that distributes drugs that everyone knew could be deadly to be monitoring that distribution. They didn't. They seem to have only responded to government mandated requests for information.

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VorAbaddon t1_j2b77d7 wrote

Replying to powersurge (#1,189,624)

Could be because of the records they kept. Thats what threw me for a loop about the Sackler lawsuits. There were emails with exchanges like (paraphrasing):

"Hey... this is gonna kill a metric fuckload of people annually..."

"Yeah, and? You want to make quarterly goal or not?"

Like even putting the dripping lack of morality and ethics asode, who the fuck is dumb enough to commit that shit to writing?

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CountryGuy123 t1_j2bbgsh wrote

Replying to ragnaROCKER (#1,198,269)

Isn't it medical regulators who determine who a pill mill is (or isn't)? It's not for a distributor to question a doctor on their diagnosis of patients.

I'm all for going after people who deserve it, but that doesn't mean everyone involved in the creation of opioids did something wrong.

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AKraiderfan t1_j2bpaqt wrote

Replying to CountryGuy123 (#1,202,647)

They know where the pills go...

So if a million pills go to a town of 5000, and these pills are usually prescribed 2 a day, and that pharmacy sells 200 pills/month of all non-opioid product, they can employ a simple macro in excel to throw up a red flag and check the numbers out.

Yes, people up and down the supply chain needs to be in jail for this shit, because people up and down the supply chain got rich from this statistically obvious activity.

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CountryGuy123 t1_j2c8jjp wrote

Replying to AKraiderfan (#1,206,174)

And all of these scripts are recorded and available to state governments. I don't want manufacturers overriding medical doctors, that's insane. If the doctors are abusing their credentials, then let state medical boards address it.

The manufacturer has a MEDICAL DOCTOR prescribing the drugs. Why would you want engineers and distribution / transportation professionals making medical decisions??

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Away_Swimming_5757 t1_j2cirdw wrote

Replying to CountryGuy123 (#1,211,533)

Not to mention, in the event AmeriSourceBergen were to deny pharmacies orders they placed and said, "Well, we did a Macro on our Excel spreadsheet and you were flagged as ordering too many because of the population of your region", there would be all types of lawsuits and violations waged against them.

The true culprits here are the doctors who prescribed them, the sales reps who pushed them and bribed doctors and the creators of the addictive medicines who weren't honest or transparent with the addictive potential of their products. The distributor is not the problem, in my opinion.

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BusinessKangaroo t1_j2co01c wrote

ITT: ppl who have no understanding of the industry, see the word “opioid” and automatically assume AB is at fault because “big pharma”.

Also, from the article (AB’s statement):

“With the vast quantity of information that AmerisourceBergen shared directly with the DEA with regards to these five pharmacies, the DEA still did not feel the need to take swift action itself - in fact, AmerisourceBergen terminated relationships with four of them before DEA ever took any enforcement action while two of the five pharmacies maintain their DEA controlled substance registration to this day.

A Federal Judge recently held that AmerisourceBergen has maintained a compliance diversion control program in accordance with the law for decades. This sweeping decision addressed many of the same accusations that are made in this DOJ complaint while acknowledging the role of the DEA in controlled substance distribution with tools like manufacturing quotas - ultimately concluding that AmerisourceBergen had complied with the law.”

They are a wholesale distributor, not a manufacturer and not a pharmacy. They buy from manufacturers and sell to providers. They reported findings to DEA but they can’t be the ones making large scale decisions because if they’re wrong, patients are not getting what they need.

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1solate t1_j2cvra3 wrote

Replying to CountryGuy123 (#1,202,647)

In no real world will the "regulators" (I suppose you mean the FDA here) would ever have the resources to have complete visibility into the system. These distributors do and should share in the responsibility in vetting and reporting as any other industry.

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Live_For_Love t1_j2dl5jf wrote

Replying to ForkBombGoBoom (#1,207,584)

Unfortunately, pain patients are already being left to suffer. As a pain patient with severe pain from valid and diagnosed diseases, I still don’t get adequate pain medication because doctors are terrified to prescribe.

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Glad_Nefariousness_6 t1_j2dm8t8 wrote

It’s a shame how the way the ACA rated doctors is not coming in to play here at all. It absolutely played a role but the Obama admin is a much tougher media sell than the big bad pharma industry (the same one the word universally became devoted to when forcing experimental ineffective gene therapy into everyone’s arms).

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Glad_Nefariousness_6 t1_j2dmpe1 wrote

Replying to powersurge (#1,189,624)

This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. I’d much rather see the govt make that self assessment than private industry. AB has already been investigated. Where is the liability for the Obama admin that threatened the reimbursements to doctors based on patient feedback? Addicts demanding scripts and doctors saying no could result in lower reimbursements - many doctors say that also played a major role. And considering how pharma lobbyists essentially wrote the ACA, it’s a wonder how Obama gets no blame here. He’s at least as to blame as AB.

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Glad_Nefariousness_6 t1_j2dmxzg wrote

Replying to AKraiderfan (#1,206,174)

So isn’t the govt more at fault? Where were the regulators as this was happening? Why ten years later is the govt absolving themselves of blame and going after private companies with highest revenue ?

Does our ever increasing in size enormous govt ever have any blame ?

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Sliderisk t1_j2dnyra wrote

Replying to BusinessKangaroo (#1,215,872)

They are also a Fortune 5 company that barely anyone knows about. I wholly agree with your post which defends the reality of the situation without picking sides. I think DOJ or some people within it see a PR opportunity in admonishing something/anything for the failings involved with the opioid crisis. Sure DEA are the ones who really should have acted, and sure their leash was pulled by Obama for who knows what reasons (pharma lobby and dark money), but those are bigger issues than the scope of this article. This is nothing but a field day for lawyers in government and at a massively wealthy corporation.

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BusinessKangaroo t1_j2dpjc1 wrote

Replying to go_berds (#1,185,413)

Unlike other players in this value chain, pharma wholesalers margins are typically <5%. AB and others are being propped up as the culprit here while the other players are getting away w the real crime. They’re hardly even the “getaway driver”

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smbiggy t1_j2dsbpz wrote

Am I correct in saying they’re just a distributor and not a manufacturer? They are more concerned with supplying patient’s needs as determined by other medical professionals.

I’m a nurse and I feel like this is the same as going after me for following doctor’s orders to administer opioids to my patients when it was the way things were. If the doctor orders it and the patient needs it what can I do to intervene other than quit ?

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CountryGuy123 t1_j2ebb8z wrote

Replying to 1solate (#1,217,800)

FDA is federal! Every state has its own regulatory agencies that get EVERY script, the doctor, the amount prescribed, the patient, and the pharmacy it's filled. They have more information than any distributor.

Do you know how prescriptions work behind the scenes at all?

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HoagiesDad t1_j2eg1y8 wrote

Replying to Lucretian (#1,221,428)

I’d try to respond to that but I skimmed the article and it automatically made me think about all the useless tests my doctors office has me take. Like it’s standard procedure for my blood to get tested for drugs every time I go in. I’m a stroke survivor and haven’t done any drugs in 20 years. It’s bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. I suppose something has to subsidize that.

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