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ANNUAL ‘WINNERS’ FOR MOST EGREGIOUS US HEALTHCARE PROFITEERING
ANNOUNCED  
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Marina Dunbar
January 7, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Selling body parts without consent and billing desperate parents
$97,599 for air transport among worst examples _

Police outside the corporate headquarters of UnitedHealthcare in
Minnetonka, Minnesota on December 8, 2024, Chad Davis

 

The 2024 “winners” of the annual Shkreli awards
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year to perpetrators of the most egregious examples of profiteering
and dysfunction within the healthcare industry, have been released
from the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare thinktank.

The recipients are chosen by a panel made up of health policy experts,
clinicians, journalists and advocates. The awards are named after
Martin Shkreli [[link removed]],
the infamous “pharma bro” who rose to international notoriety
after increasing the price of lifesaving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim
50-fold.

 
“All these stories paint a picture of a healthcare industry in
desperate need of transformation. In 2024, healthcare practices were
put in the spotlight,” Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute,
said during the ceremony.

“But doing these awards every year shows us that this is nothing
new. We’re hoping that these stories illuminate what changes are
needed.”

The No 10 spot this year went to the University of North Texas health
science center in Fort Worth for allegedly neglecting to notify next
of kin before selling body parts of deceased people.

An NBC News
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investigation uncovered that the school did not properly receive
consent from the deceased or their family members before dissecting
and distributing unclaimed bodies, despite the network finding that
said family members were fairly easy to identify and contact.

The ninth spot was given to the outdated practice of baby tongue-tie
cutting, which continues to be falsely touted as a cure for several
ailments, from sleep apnea to nursing trouble, according to the New
York Times
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Shady billing practices from Zynex Medical, a company specializing in
nerve-stimulation devices used for pain management, took the No 8
slot. Patients received Zynex devices understanding the expense would
be covered by insurance, according to a report from Stat News
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Users then got unsolicited supplies of items like batteries and
electrode pads delivered to them (often excessive quantities), which
they ultimately got charged for. The report states_ _that almost 70%
of Zynex’s $184m in revenue in 2023 came from batteries and
electrode pads.

“This is just classic over-billing. It’s fraud,” Patricia
Kelmar, a senior director at the research group US Pirg and judge on
the panel, said. “The patients feel that they owe the money because
they already received the supplies. We see a lot of this kind of abuse
within the pain-management field.”

 
The seventh spot was given to Sara England and her infant son, Amari
Vaca. After the three-month-old experienced severe respiratory
distress two months after open-heart surgery, doctors at Natividad
medical center in Salinas, California, chose to have him transferred
via air ambulance
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to a medical center in San Francisco. He recovered and Cigna later
deemed the service “not medically necessary”. The family was given
a $97,599 bill.

“This is happening everywhere,” Kelmar said. “The insurance
denial here is that it should have been a ground ambulance instead of
air, but how is the patient supposed to know that? This is a mother
taking medical advice from the doctors.”

At No 6 was Medicare’s mass billing for urinary catheters. As many
as 450,000 beneficiaries had bills for catheters submitted on their
behalf in 2023, representing an 800% increase over previous years.
Just seven suppliers
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were responsible for $2bn of these suspicious charges.

Taking the No 5 spot was Memorial medical center (a former non-profit
turned for-profit) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for allegations of
refusing cancer treatment to patients
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or demanding upfront payments, even from those with insurance.

ProPublica’s uncovering of a once-celebrated oncologist’s pattern
of malpractice and trails of suspicious deaths
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came in at No 4. Dr Thomas C Weiner of Helena, Montana, reportedly
subjected one patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for more than a
decade, amid a myriad of other shocking revelations.

Lumakras, a cancer drug from Amgen that was granted accelerated FDA
approval
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at a daily dose of 960mg, despite findings that a 240mg dose offered
similar efficacy with reduced toxicity and risk of side effects,
grabbed the third spot.

“Pharma companies have that same incentive to get a return on
profits,” said Kelmar. “The healthcare industry is a business, and
businesses will try to get the highest profits possible.”

At No 2 was the behemoth that is UnitedHealth
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and how it’s become the fourth-largest business in the nation.
Doctors for United have reported pressure to reduce time spent with
patients, and make patients seem as sick as possible through
aggressive medical coding tactics.

In a highly competitive year, the top spot went to Steward Health
Care, whose CEO, Ralph de la Torre, is accused of prioritizing
private-equity profits
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over patient care. His financial scheming led to bankruptcy, leaving
hospitals in shambles, employees laid off and communities with less
healthcare access.

“I want to say that this is our backyard,” said Saini.

“What was going on here was on the grapevine for many years. And if
we knew about it, then we have to ask: ‘Where are the regulators?
Where are the people who should’ve known better?”

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* US Health Care; Health Insurance; United Health; Steward Health
Care;
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