Is California suing because it’s stupid?
I haven’t read the suit so I don’t know what it is exactly that California alleges the drug companies have done. But the New York Times gives the impression that the state’s attorney general, Bill Lockyer, is suing to recover for his client’s own business incompetence:
Mr. Lockyer held up a bottle of 50-milligram tablets of Atenolol, a generic high blood pressure treatment manufactured by Mylan Laboratories, for which the state paid $804.70. A pharmacy chain pays $33.85 for the same bottle, he said.
Mr. Lockyer acknowledged that the Medi-Cal system might not always be the most prudent buyer of pharmaceuticals and other medical services. But he said that did not let the drug companies off the hook for what he called an elaborate scheme of fixing prices.
“I wish there had been more aggressive negotiations along the way,” Mr. Lockyer said. “Now we have to clean up after the elephant.”
So insufficiently aggressive negotiations by state officials makes the pharmaceutical companies guilty of fraud? And you “clean up” not by altering your own practices, but by suing people who do what their shareholders expect them to do and maximize profits?
And get a load of this cheap shot:
California officials cited as an example a pint bag of saline solution used as an intravenous drip manufactured by Abbott Laboratories. The lowest price available to health care providers was 95 cents, the officials said. Medi-Cal was charged $9.78 for the same item.
“We have an ocean of it,” Mr. Lockyer said. “It’s called saltwater.”
Well, Mr. Lockyer, why don’t you hook yourself up to an intravenous drip of ocean water and see how that works out for you.
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