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Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

fortune.com

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Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#41

Post by dmoy »

esturk wrote: post #39
owly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deterrent and long term way to keep patients safe is not just the 4 years in prison, it is losing his medical license in perpetuity throughout the USA. Not sure if his sentence includes this but it should be in public records. My PCP in MA was busted for a different charge and lost his ability to practice medicine FOREVER throughout the USA. Way to throw all those years of med school in the dustbin!

He did lose his medical license but he's also 63. After he's out, he's most likely going to retire.

If he saved enough, ha. You'd be surprised at how many doctors making $300k+/yr have less than a couple years' worth of expenses saved up :/

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#42

Post by enraged_camel »

mikeash wrote: post #15
onetimemanytime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is the President, not a King. This doc has been convicted and was sentenced based on the laws in place when he commuted the crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law and all. Also Trump cannot force the US Congress and Senate to pass the laws. Or the courts to judge that this is compatible with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment

The question is whether he would support it, not whether he would enact it by decree.

Yes, exactly. And I think we already know that the answer is no, he wouldn't support it. Trump has a very childish perception of the world, and a doctor undoubtedly does not fit his mental image of the drug dealer stereotype.

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#43

Post by ekianjo »

dmoy wrote: post #41
esturk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did lose his medical license but he's also 63. After he's out, he's most likely going to retire.

If he saved enough, ha. You'd be surprised at how many doctors making $300k+/yr have less than a couple years' worth of expenses saved up :/

any source for that claim?

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#45

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

pessimizer wrote: post #12
onetimemanytime wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really comparable. The street dealer is not likely to get 40 years, although many may have gotten it (Assuming that a street dealer doesn't have 400 kilos of coke in his stash house. If he does, he's no street dealer) Also the doc loses his license and every single penny he has, between lawyers, years without being able to make a penny, and court fines. When you make a certain amount of money the trend is to live…

> When the money stops coming in, guess what happens? You drop to the status of a boring working person who never took kickbacks to sell opiates? A fate worse than death, I guess. The street dealer is also not likely to get 4 years. That's the point - 40 years was a number picked to illustrate a sentencing discrepancy argument. The fact that a 10x factor seems almost reasonable is the argument. > a street dealer does…

Crikey! If I'd been caught with everything that went through my hands as a small scale dealer I'd be screwed. Over ten years it certainly adds up! Kilograms of methamphetamine, thousands of ecstasy tables, tens of thousands of LSD tabs, a few hundred grams of pharmaceutical grade heroin.

Yeah, they don't look favourable upon those sorts of quantities.

Fortunately I only got caught with about five days worth of merchandise.

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#46

Post by skookumchuck »

astura wrote: post #8
efini wrote: post #5

Will Trump support the execution of this man and other legal drug dealers like him as well?

This is getting down voted but I don't think that's fair, it's not off topic. Trump said yesterday he's in favor of the death penalty for drug dealers because they are responsible for the death of others. It's a fair question to ask if there should be a distinction between street dealers and these doctors and executives.

> they are responsible for the death of others

Are they? Those others knowingly and voluntarily took those drugs.

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#47

Post by username223 »

> [Doctor], who lost his medical license and was ousted from his post as a Brown University professor, pleaded guilty to taking more than $188,000 in kickbacks disguised as speaker fees and creating false patient records to dupe insurers into covering Insys’s Subsys pain medication...

> ... [his] son was an Insys sales representative for a year and made “substantial commissions” from his father’s willingness to prescribe the drug, according to prosecutors. The son wasn’t charged in the case.

Oh, gee, it's Purdue Pharma again, i.e. the Sackler family. How am I not surprised, and how are they not fined?

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#48

Post by namelost »

dcposch wrote: post #7
1ris wrote: post #6

How many years would a street dealer have gotten? 40 years?

That just means we should treat low level criminals humanely. Four years is plenty. The thing where decade plus sentences are fairly common is unique in the first world: only in America. It’s barbaric and embarrassing. The science is pretty unambiguous—a high likelihood of being caught and punished is a better deterrent than a low-probability but larger punishment. So I don’t want to see this doctor get a 40-year sen…

Street dealers, "low level" or not, do actually kill their clients.

Prison sentences for dealing hard drugs should be in line with prison sentences for murder, otherwise the implication is that the lives of drug users are much less valuable than the lives of regular people.

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#49

Post by toomuchtodo »

dmoy wrote: post #41
esturk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did lose his medical license but he's also 63. After he's out, he's most likely going to retire.

If he saved enough, ha. You'd be surprised at how many doctors making $300k+/yr have less than a couple years' worth of expenses saved up :/

The longer he’s in prison, he’ll be closer to full retirement age, meaning he’ll collect a higher social security benefit (62 is the bare minimum, waiting until 70 gives you the highest monthly amount).

He’s essentially already retired now.

Re: Doctor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Insys Opioid Kickbacks

#50

Post by toomuchtodo »

skookumchuck wrote: post #46
astura wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting down voted but I don't think that's fair, it's not off topic. Trump said yesterday he's in favor of the death penalty for drug dealers because they are responsible for the death of others. It's a fair question to ask if there should be a distinction between street dealers and these doctors and executives.

> they are responsible for the death of others Are they? Those others knowingly and voluntarily took those drugs.

Addiction is not voluntary.
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