Billionaire Insys founder charged in U.S. opioid bribe case | Hacker News Reader

Billionaire Insys founder charged in U.S. opioid bribe case

finance.yahoo.com

123 pointspropman44 comments

The cynic in me thinks Kapoor was "sacrificed" to shield the Sacklers. Sort of like how Rajaratnam was "sacrificed" to shield the large banks.

For those unfamiliar, or who want to explore the idea that Kapoor simply didn't bribe conspicuously enough, see [0]. And although it is true that so-called "deaths of despair" are all increasing[1], the trend-lines for opiates look especially distressing[2].

[0] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-famil...

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078

[2] https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...

co-sign!

...as much as 10,000 times more potent than morphine ...In the US Fentanyl caused 20,100 deaths in 2016, a rise of 540% over the past 3 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl

Put him in the cell next to El Chappo IMO.

If the government digs they will find something and they have plenty of tools for informers. You cannot manage a billion dollar corporation with thousands of employees by whispering while walking like John Gotti. There's trail...

A couple random things:

1) I broke my leg quite badly, and after morphine and dilaudid didn't help they put me on fentanyl, which at the dosage they gave me, just barely helped with the pain. I am VERY glad they had that in their arsenal.

2) My understanding is that most Fentanyl deaths are due to heroin being cut with fentanyl (or even replaced with) on the street market and addicts don't know the potency of what they get, and OD. That fentanyl is coming illegally usually from China (either directly or via Mexico, etc..) and is isn't directly the fault of Pharma. If you want to solve that problem you need to either stabilize heroin potency or make it easy to test, etc... also making Narcan cheaply/freely available would save a lot of lives.

yeah and the entire FDA group that allowed this and maybe the pain center doctors who ran pill mills all over the midwest and south? Nah, they are all rich, easier to find a scapegoat, pretend your doing something, and gloat. The life of politics. Maybe declare a war on drugs!

Don't forget the Congress and President that enabled it through legislation.

> Maybe declare a war on drugs!

Declare a national public health emergency. That'll surely make a dent.

"Trump declares opioid epidemic a national public health emergency"

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politics/donald-trump-opioid-e...

I don't know if it's true in this case, but there are a lot of things for which an official declaration of emergency allows you to tap funds that wouldn't otherwise be available.

At least one step in the right direction. But we're still pretty far from reaching some parity with the idea that it's often a life sentence to be driving in a car with someone who commits a murder if you're poor and black, but it's some soft white collar club fed crime to get thousands addicted to your drug, take their money, ruin their families for years and eventually take their lives.

Let's keep comments relative please. Systemic racism is a problem but has nothing to do with Insys.

A case is being made regarding relative punishments. I find this is an entirely appropriate time and location to bring this argument, given that the main criteria for comments is that they are substantive and contribute. I think this one contributes by starting an interesting side conversation, which are in my opinion one of the best parts of HN.

If you don't want to take part, just click the [-] to collapse the thread and ignore it. If you take issue with the actual content of the comment, a bit more information on why you think it has nothing to do with a case where a high placed executive might face relatively minor punishment for, as the GP puts it, getting "thousands addicted to your drug, take their money, ruin their families for years and eventually take their lives." might help clarify that stance.

Should I choose some other crime to compare it to? Ok, how about the fact that possessing this guy's drug without a prescription would land a white guy in jail faster than Kapoor's going to get there for peddling it to hundreds of thousands of people?

You don't need to get hung up on the crime that I'm juxtaposing it with. Just notice the gulf between some types of justice and others.

There are so many new faces in this thread and they all want to refocus the conversation on other hot button topics. Why is this?

This guy works in HR.

I can choose not to buy and take opiates. I can't choose to not be murdered.

Murderers are much worse, and prisons better serve their purpose when they're used for murderers and their accomplices than when they're used for white collar crime.

Choice is irrelevant unless it’s an informed choice. It’s impossible to make an informed choice when people keep the information from you.

These people are responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths. It’s a little less direct than shooting someone in the face, but it should still be considered mass murder.

White collar crime can do far much more societal damage than a single murderer can. I don't see any reason they both can't share prison.

Eh. The scale is not really comparable. People who create systemic problems that are difficult to fix pose a much greater threat to society than people who murder individuals.

I'm not saying to go easy on murderers. The opposite: I'm saying that we should take the former even more seriously.

Fentanyl is an incredibly potent and addictive drug.

Spoken like someone who’s never had major surgery or trauma.

Exactly.

I know some pretty tough guys. One of which took a gunshot wound and barely needed any recovery time.

This same guy got in a car accident that ruined his back. After some surgery, he tried to not use opioid pain killers, but he described it as maddening. It's not the pain that brings you issues, it's the constant dull, aching pains that give your life grief.

He started taking prescribed opioids for it. When it came time to ween off of them, he said it was like looking into a void where he had two exceptionally clear choices: continue using opioids, or struggle to get off of them. He picked the latter and is opioid free for a few years now. He said it was the hardest thing he's ever done.

He's just happy to say that he doesn't need them anymore.

Back pain is somehow more personal, emotional. For me, it’s much harder to ignore, suffer.

I think that future generations may look at how we were forced to deal with pain in much the way we look at pre-anesthesia surgery.

When I was 19 I messed my back up very badly on the job. The company tried very hard not to take responsibility for it, going so far as court with dueling doctors.

The fact I refused opiods for my pain was used against me, "If it's so bad why aren't you taking the pain medications?"

My lawyer told me that if I had taken them I likely would have gotten 50% more int he settlement. I don't regret it though. Addiction is a major problem in my family.

So always get the script, then flush them?

A strategy defeated by a single question under oath: “And were you taking the drugs as prescribed?”

I don't understand why this needed to be on a throwaway account?

The account you're responding to is over 3 months old, which, while not as old as some, doesn't appear to have been created purely for this conversation. There are quite a few members on HN whose accounts appear to have originally been created as a throwaway that have gone on to use it as their main account. Let's err on the side of giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Fair point - I didn't check age.

Would you like this new kind of aspirin? Its totally worry-free as several neutral studies will tell you? Its relative cheap and has a cool name- PuffThePinkDragon.

A major part of this scandal is the fact that Insys' bribery led me patients to be misled in their choice, by the doctors they trusted for expert advice.

In this case doctors were pushing drugs on patients....for some folks, you can't choose not to be addicted after taking it for a length of time.

It's not a great societal practice that we demand everyone be smart enough to defy medical decree in order to remain safe. I know you 140 IQ antisocial introverts always want to structure society as a kleptocracy for the intelligent, but that would be a shit place to live.

The most addictive substance on the planet, and still have to make bribes, strange.

I wish we had Mueller on this case.

He should stop pledging not guilty because he really may see 20 years behind.

Even his wife pledged against him:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4087622-insys-guilty-pleas-...

Does anyone struggle with the fact that 1) people who are very sick or injured need pain control and 2) the only tool in a doctor's bag is an opoid and 3) we are somehow going after the people that produce the opoids that patients need, to live a less-painful life?

Far more people die annually of alcohol related illnesses, than do opoid overdoses. This is the "crisis" is not a crisis at all. In fact, if you review the CDC's numbers, the rate of increase in opoid related deaths and the total number, relative to other more significant causes of death, are unremarkable. [link] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

By the numbers, we should be tripling and quadrupling the amount of money for mental health treatment to reduce suicide and alcohol dependency.

Please, before you vote down or troll me, review the numbers yourself. The numbers speak for themselves [link]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#019

You changed the subject to alcohol though. No one said alcohol wasn't a problem or that opioids have no use. We might as well start talking about first addressing everyone killed in car accidents or unjust wars.

I was trying to bring into focus some key challenges. I've personally known two people whom overdosed on heroine. It's a tragedy, for certain. However, I'm just trying to indicate that we have tragedies happening, all over. I think everyone has a very emotional reaction to this issue. I'm just asking people to think about the data...

As for this company, maybe they are guilty, I don't know. If they are, shame on them!!

My uncle eventually died of bone cancer (metastatic). His last few months were awful. They were less-awful, because he had a fentanyl patch, that we replace every 24 hours.

Please be thoughtful, that's all I'm asking.

As another commenter noted, you are not looking at the data thoroughly yourself.

Also, nobody is arguing these opiods don't help the people who need them. The atrocity here is that doctors were bribed to prescribe them to patients who didn't need them at all.

The issue here is not the production of opiod drugs. The issue is bribing doctors. This guy would not be under prosecution if he had just produced opiods.

The vast majority of "alcohol related illnesses" hit people late in life--taking a decade or so off of their life.

The opiod epidemic is hitting people in their prime. It's the leading cause of death for 15-65 year olds, and it dwarfs any other cause for people in their prime.

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_o...

(for reference, 90% of "unintentional poisonings" are opioid/opiate related, and it's data from 2015. By some measures, the increase in 2016 was an additional 10,000 ODs)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/05/upshot/opioid...

I don't think the numbers agree with your assessment.

Taken straight from your PDF link, (emphasis mine) "the increasing overuse of prescription opioid painkillers, contributing to a national drug overdose epidemic and rising drug poisoning deaths"

Look at pages 153, 154 and 155. Drug poisoning deaths per 100,000 resident population (age adjusted) 1999: 6.1, 2015: 16.3

Drug poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesics (other than heroin) per 100,000 resident population 1999: 1.4, 2015: 7.0

Drug poisoning deaths involving heroin per 100,000 resident population 1999: 0.7, 2015: 4.1

I think you should look into Insys before you use them to take a stance like this.

Where did you come from?

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