On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 11:31:18 -0700, ZZyXX
wrote:

On 3/20/18 3:10 AM, BurfordTJustice wrote:
New York (AFP) - Five Manhattan doctors have been indicted for accepting
hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a pharmaceutical company in
exchange for prescribing a powerful synthetic opioid, a prosecutor said
Friday.

The indictments come as the United States grapples with an opioid abuse
epidemic that kills scores of people every day, and has been declared a
national health emergency by President Donald Trump.

Two employees of Arizona-based drug maker Insys pleaded guilty and
participated in the investigation that led to the arrest of the doctors.

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The doctors "engaged in a malignant scheme to prescribe fentanyl, a
dangerous and potentially fatal narcotic 50 to 100 times more potent than
morphine, in exchange for bribes in the form of speaker fees," US Attorney
Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.

"This scheme to use their patients as an instrument for profit has resulted
in the indictment of five physicians," he said.

The doctors were paid "fees" for allegedly conducting educational programs
about a fentanyl-based pain relief spray, the statement said.

But "in reality, many of the speaker programs led by the defendants were
predominantly social affairs where no educational presentation about the
fentanyl spray occurred," it said.

In exchange for the payments, the doctors prescribed "millions of dollars'
worth" of the spray.

Charges against the doctors include honest services fraud conspiracy, which
carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Insys agreed last year to pay a $4.5 million fine after being accused of
deceptive marketing to promote its "Subsys" fentanyl spray.

In 2016, more than 63,500 people died of drug overdoses in the United
States, nearly two thirds of them involving prescription opioids.


damn republicans

Republicans in New York? Not likely.