Insys Therapeutics Inc. (fka INSYQ)

[236T568]

oops, you seem to have missed this part:


"Before they were arrested last year, Alabama doctors John Couch and Xiulu Ruan were prized customers of Insys Therapeutics Inc., maker of a powerful and highly addictive type of synthetic opioid known as fentanyl.
Drs. Couch and Ruan prescribed a combined $4.9 million of the painkiller, called Subsys, to Medicare patients in 2013 and 2014, among the most of any doctors in the U.S., federal data show.

Insys, based in Chandler, Ariz., went to unusual lengths to keep these high-prescribing doctors happy. Insys Executive Chairman John N. Kapoor, the company's billionaire co-founder, personally traveled to Mobile, Ala., to attend a business dinner with them, said people familiar with the matter. The doctors were also frequent speakers and consultants for Insys, which paid them $270,700 in combined fees over 21 months, according to government data.

Many of those fees were bribes paid by Insys to reward the doctors for prescribing large quantities of Subsys, federal prosecutors allege in a 22-count criminal indictment filed in Mobile against the doctors this April. Overall, the pair wrote more than a quarter-million prescriptions for fentanyl, oxycodone and other controlled substances including Subsys over five years, some of which were abused by addicts or diverted to drug traffickers, the indictment alleges."


and


"Federal and state prosecutors and regulators in more than 15 jurisdictions are investigating Insys's business practices or doctors with whom Insys has ties, the company has said in financial statements. "


and


"Last month, federal prosecutors in Boston arrested the former head of Insys's reimbursement unit, alleging she oversaw and encouraged widespread fraud in obtaining payment for Subsys from pharmacy-benefit managers. "


and


"Insys is run by Dr. Kapoor, a 73-year-old pharmaceuticals executive known for applying aggressive marketing tactics and sharp price increases on older drugs. "



and


"This month, Dr. Awerbuch pleaded guilty to illegally prescribing Subsys and defrauding a Michigan health-insurer. He is scheduled to be sentenced in February.
After Dr. Awerbuch's arrest, Patty Nixon began having panic attacks, often vomiting in the morning before going to work at Insys, she says. As a staff member of Insys's reimbursement center she had worked often with Dr. Awerbuch's office to get his prescriptions paid for by pharmacy-benefit managers, which oversee drug spending for employers and insurers.
Ms. Nixon's job involved a lot of lying, she says. Many PBMs refused to pay for Subsys unless it was prescribed specifically for cancer pain or unless patients had tried a cheaper alternative first. So, when Ms. Nixon and other Insys employees called PBMs, they would often pretend to be from the doctors' office that wrote the prescription and say the patient had cancer even when they didn't, she says. Most patients had actually been diagnosed with chronic pain, including back, neck and shoulder pain, Ms. Nixon said.
Ms. Nixon says she and other employees were pressured to improve the approval rate for prescriptions by their boss, Elizabeth Gurrieri, the former Insys manager arrested in October. Ms. Gurrieri hasn't entered a plea.
"She'd say, 'Dr. Kapoor's not happy, we have to get these approvals up, '" Ms. Nixon recalls. Ms. Nixon says she also testified to a federal grand jury in Massachusetts last year about her experiences at Insys.
Ms. Gurrieri and other Insys managers taught reimbursement-unit employees to "mislead and deceive insurers regarding their employment, patient diagnoses" and the medications patients had taken previously, according to a criminal complaint that accuses Ms. Gurrieri of wire-fraud conspiracy. "In this environment, corruption became endemic within the Reimbursement Unit," the complaint says.
Ms. Gurrieri didn't respond to requests for comment left on her cellphone. "


and


"The doctors sealed the deal over a dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House in Mobile attended by Dr. Kapoor, former Insys Chief Executive Michael Babich and sales manager Joe Rowan, one of the people said. "


and


"In September, Insys announced that Dr. Kapoor would step aside as CEO and that the company had begun a search for a new chief executive. "

Morning, 236T568.

Did you bother reading what you posted?

Quote:
In February, a pharmacy shipped a month's supply of Subsys to a man in his early 30s who was prescribed the drug for back pain. He broke open the spray-containers, poured the fentanyl into a cup, and suctioned it into a syringe. Within hours, he was dead. "Multiple needles" and "units of Subsys" were "found around the bed [where] the patient's body was found," according to an adverse-event report submitted by Insys to the FDA and obtained by the Journal with a Freedom of Information Act request.


Two points:

1. The man was hardly an innocent victim. Even aspirin has been used to commit suicide. Whatever this fellow intended - pleasure or suicide - prosecution would be more pointless than indicting aspirin sellers for aspirin deaths. Aspirin is powerless against breakthrough cancer pain as well as other extreme pain.

2. The screams of pain from muckrakers include the use of Subsys - and only Subsys - for unapproved drug use but the FDA has no power to control doctors from prescribing offlabel. Would you like to hear how a diabetic suffers when a man finally has the final bit of a leg amputated in a futile effort to stop advancing gangrene? Perhaps "galloping gangrene," more commonly known colloquially as "flesh-eating bacteria" [nicitating fasciitis] is more appealing to your sensibilities?

The odious mark of sensationalist journalism is no longer missing from the once staid pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Given all that, there is enough smoke from generally assumed reliable sources regarding the CEO/founder of Insys for prospective shareholders and actual shareholders like myself to be very concerned.

All JMO.

Best, Terry