Big Pharma tops defense at government fraud

According to a new report, drugmakers defraud the federal government more than any other business.

Call it Notorious Big Pharma. According to a new report, drugmakers defraud the federal government more than any other business. Even more than the defense industry, which for decades had been the poster child for government fraud. As the New York Times reports, four drugmakers accounted for more than half of the fraud settlements paid to the feds and state governments over the past 20 years.

You could say that pharma tops the list of fraudsters simply because governments have been aggressively investigating and prosecuting the industry. The feds have had new-and-improved help from whistleblowers, who, under the 1986 revisions to the False Claims Act, gained additional incentives to sue, and it's these FCA settlements that Public Citizen enumerates in its fraud report. Plus, three-fourths of these settlements wrapped up within the past five years, indicating that governments have stepped up their efforts.

Still, for government investigators to find misbehavior, i