A Quickie from The World Of Big Pharma Pud Sucking.

From Drug Topics, the trade magazine any pharmacist with a respect for good writing loves to hate:

The Pharmacia and Upjohn subsidiary of Pfizer was ordered to pay $19.68 million after pleading guilty to offering kickbacks to a PBM in the expectation of obtaining improved formulary status for Pharmacia drug products.........At the plea hearing, the prosecutor argued that Pharmacia offered more than $12 million in inflated payments to a subsidiary of a PBM.

After the hearing the Federal Prosecutor held a press conference to say "We feel that by penalizing Pfizer a little bit more than the millions of dollars it was willing to spend engaging in illegal activity we are sending a loud and clear message to the entire pharmaceutical industry. Indeed, with this settlement, equal to approximately 9 hours of Pfizer's net profit for 2006, we think the federal government's position on misconduct by Corporate America is obvious for all to see."

The quote from the prosecutor is fake. The penalty being 9 hours of profit is true. The difference between the "penalty" and what Pfizer was willing to spend to bribe your insurance company works out to around 3½ hours worth of their income. The equivalent of fining me around 200 bucks.

We fucking showed you Pfizer.