Announcing the 2024 Shkreli Award Recipients for Healthcare Exploitation
The annual Shkreli Awards, named after the infamous “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, have been announced, spotlighting the top 10 most egregious cases of profiteering and dysfunction within the healthcare sector. This year’s list includes a Texas medical school involved in unauthorized body part sales, a massive catheter billing fraud, an oncologist accused of providing unnecessary cancer treatments, and a dominant health insurance monopoly.
Hosted by the Lown Institute, a Massachusetts-based think tank committed to advocating for a just and compassionate healthcare system, the Shkreli Awards are now in their eighth iteration. A panel of 20 expert judges, including doctors, professors, and activists, selected this year’s most flagrant violators.
This year’s recipients include:
10: Reports have surfaced that the University of North Texas Health Science Center handled and distributed body parts from deceased individuals without proper consent. These parts were provided not only to medical students but also to large corporations such as Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson.
9: Procedures to correct baby tongue-ties are being aggressively promoted as a solution for a range of issues from breastfeeding problems to sleep disturbances and even constipation, despite a lack of solid evidence supporting the effectiveness of these procedures.
8: Zynex Medical has come under scrutiny for questionable billing practices involving their nerve stimulation devices designed for pain relief.
7: Insurance heavyweight Cigna was criticized for charging a family close to $100,000 for a medevac flight for an infant.
6: A group of seven suppliers has been implicated in a multibillion-dollar scam overbilling Medicare for urinary catheters, affecting hundreds of thousands of patients.
5: Allegations have been made against Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico for denying cancer treatments to insured patients or demanding payment upfront.
4: Dr. Thomas C. Weiner, a Montana-based oncologist, reportedly subjected a patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for over a decade, used excessively high doses of barbiturates on terminally ill patients, and prescribed opioids inappropriately. Weiner has denied these allegations.
3: Pharmaceutical giant Amgen is accused of promoting a 960-milligram dose of its potent cancer medication Lumakras, despite a smaller 240mg dose being nearly as effective with significantly less toxicity, and costing $180,000 less per patient each year.
2: UnitedHealth is alleged to have manipulated its extensive network of physicians to maximize profits by pressuring doctors to minimize patient interaction times and employ aggressive medical coding strategies to exaggerate patient illnesses for higher federal reimbursements.
1: Dr. Ralph de la Torre, CEO of Steward Health Care, has been accused of creating a severe healthcare crisis by prioritizing private equity gains over patient care, involving debt and leaseback strategies that led to hospital closures, layoffs, and community neglect while reportedly earning over $250 million as the organization floundered.
“These examples underscore the desperate need for reform in the healthcare industry,” stated Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, during the award ceremony as reported by The Guardian.
Dr. Saini further emphasized, “Highlighting these cases annually reminds us that these issues are not new. We aim to shed light on the necessary changes through these stories.”
The announcement of the Shkreli Awards came shortly after the shocking murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth subsidiary UnitedHealthcare, an event that ignited national conversations about greed within the for-profit healthcare system after the alleged assailant, Luigi Mangione, who pleaded not guilty, criticized the industry’s greed in a widely discussed manifesto.
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