Exclude Corrupt Companies from Federal Money

The black-helicopter crowd is banging the gong to make sure ACORN, a community organizing group for the poor, never gets any Federal money for anything ever again, and never mind that ACORN has not been found guilty, and is a small-potatoes recipient of Federal money.

The right-wingers want to exclude ACORN?

Fine with me. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

If you are going to start excluding companies for improprieties, you might want to start with companies that have actually PLEAD GUILTY to lying, stealing and cheating.

But heads up: It's not just defense contractors like Haliburton, Kellog Brown & Root, and Boeing that fall into that folder.

And it's not just oil companies like Shell, Chevron, and Exxon.

It's also heath care companies like these 10, each of which has plead guilty to criminal, as well as civil, fraud charges in recent years:

1. Pfizer paid $2.3 billion, of which $1.3 billion was a criminal fine for kickbacks and off-label marketing of various drugs.



2. Lilly Pharmaceuticals paid $1.4 billion to resolve Federal, state and criminal charges related to the off-label marketing of Zyprexa



3. Columbia HCA paid $840 million in criminal fines, civil penalties and damages for billing for lab tests that were not medically necessary, "upcoding" medical problems in order to get higher reimbursements, billing the government for advertising, and billing the government for non-reimbursable costs.



4. Serono paid $704 million to settle a fraud involving kickbacks paid to doctors and specialist pharmacies for prescribing Serostim, a human growth hormone.



5. Taketa-Abbott Pharmaceuticals paid $875 million to resolve criminal and civil liabilities in connection with fraudulent drug pricing and marketing of Lupron, a drug to treat prostate cancer.



6. Schering Plough paid $435 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities in related to the sales and marketing programs of three drugs (Temodar, Claritin, and K-Dur).



7. Abbott Labs paid $400 million and pleaded guilty to obstructing a criminal investigation and defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid programs.



8. Cephalon agreed to pay $375 million to setttle a case involving the off-label marketing of two drugs.
   
   
9. Gambro Healthcare agreed to pay $310.5 million to resolve charges alleging kickbacks paid to physicians, unnecessary tests and services, and payments made to a sham durable medical equipment company.



10. Bayer Corporation paid $257 million to settle Medicaid fraud charges involving a scheme in which Bayer sold re-labeled products to an HMO at deeply discounted prices, and then concealed this price discount in order to avoid paying additional rebates to the government.
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