Posted on 03/26/2008 3:04:17 PM PDT by jasonmyos
James Beck, an attorney and medical liability expert in the Philadelphia law office of Dechert LLP, said Wednesday that the Alaska attorney general was pursuing a matter best left to federal regulators.
Beck said, so-called "off label" use, where a drug is used for an unapproved purpose, is generally within the medical standard of care that is "designed to help people."
He said the state was trying to assess liability for drugs that were prescribed for "therapeutically appropriate," off-label use that helped patients recover from mental illness.
"This litigation made no logical sense; it was brought purely to recover as much money as they can for things even when nobody did anything wrong," said Beck, who wrote the Drug and Medical Device Product Liability Handbook.
States, he said, are pursing these types of regulatory cases in order to generate revenue simply because state lawmakers are "afraid" to raise taxes.
"This is an attempt to put in a tax without having the legislature approve it," Beck said. "If you divorce this from any sense of legal wrongdoing then you are simply taxing the healthcare system in another name."
(Excerpt) Read more at legalnewsline.com ...
This excerpt might make a bit more sense:
State AGs
3/26/2008
Alaska’s settlement with Eli Lilly is a tax on healthcare, says critic
by Chris Rizo
Talis Colberg
ANCHORAGE - Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg has reached a $15 million settlement with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co., over claims that the pharmaceutical company systematically downplayed the risks associated with its schizophrenia drug Zyprexa.
In what is the first Zyprexa-related lawsuit to reach a jury trial, Alaska officials were seeking $270 million in damages under the Alaska Unfair Trade Practice Consumer Protection Act for costs that the state said it would incur from health problems that its Medicaid patients could develop from using the widely used psychiatric medication.
Ah, the drug company *gave* the $15M check *to* Alaska as Alaska had sued the drug company. Even tho the State had misused the drugs.
And for the record, Alaska IS NOT afraid to raise taxes, just ask the oil companies....
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