Doctor, "Co X" accused over Medicare scam

The US Attorney's Office in Boston has charged urologist JosephSpinella with conspiring with "Company X" to receive excessive payments from Medicare relating to TAP Pharmaceuticals' prostate cancer drug Lupron (leuprolide acetate: Marketletter July 31, 2000).

Also, notes the New York Times, a "person close to the case" said prosecutors were negotiating a settlement with TAP, which could require it to pay hundreds of millions of dollars over claims that it had used Medicare illegally to help "hundreds" of doctors profit from prescribing Lupron. Company X's objective was in part, to "use the Medicare program as its checkbook for the indirect payment of kickbacks and bribes to physicians like Joseph Spinella," said the court papers.

Last month, two Florida urologists settled with the government for $1.1 million over similar charges involving Lupron, and the NYT quotes lawyers as forecasting that the Boston case, plus one involving Bayer (Marketletter September 25, 2000), could be the first of many more actions brought against drugmakers and physicians over kickbacks and other inducements to prescribe.