Annual ‘winners’ for the most blatant profiteering in US healthcare announced

The 2024 ‘winners’ of the annual Shkreli Awardsgiven each year to perpetrators of the most egregious examples of healthcare profiteering and dysfunction, have been released by the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare think tank.

Recipients are chosen by a panel composed of health policy experts, physicians, journalists and advocates. The awards are named after Martin Shkreli, the infamous ‘pharma bro’ who gained international fame after raising the price of the life-saving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim fifty-fold.

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

“But the fact that we organize these awards every year shows us that this is nothing new. We hope these stories make it clear what changes are needed.”

The No. 10 spot this year went to the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center in Fort Worth for allegedly failing to notify next of kin before selling body parts of deceased people.

A NBC News Investigations revealed that the school had not properly obtained consent from the deceased or their relatives before dissecting and distributing unclaimed bodies, despite the network’s finding that said relatives were relatively easy to identify and contact.

Ninth place was awarded to the outdated practice of clipping babies’ tongue ties, which is still falsely touted as a cure for a variety of ailments from sleep apnea to nursing problems, according to the New York Times.

Shady billing practices by Zynex Medical, a company specializing in nerve stimulation devices used for pain management, took eighth place. Patients were given Zynex devices knowing the costs would be covered by insurance, according to a report from Stat news. Users then received unsolicited deliveries of items such as batteries and electrodes (often in excessive quantities), for which they ultimately had to pay. The report states that nearly 70% of Zynex’s $184 million in 2023 revenue came from batteries and electrodes.

“This is just classic overbilling. It is fraud,” said Patricia Kelmar, senior director at the US Pirg research group and a judge on the panel. “The patients feel like they are owed the money because they have already received the supplies. We see a lot of this type of abuse in pain management.”

Seventh place went to Sara England and her son, Amari Vaca. After the three-month-old baby developed severe breathing problems two months after open-heart surgery, doctors at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California opted to have him treated. transferred by trauma helicopter to a medical center in San Francisco. He recovered and Cigna later deemed the service “not medically necessary.” The family received a bill for $97,599.

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

At number 6 was Medicare’s mass billing for urinary catheters. As many as 450,000 beneficiaries were billed for catheters in 2023, representing an 800% increase over previous years. Just now seven suppliers were responsible for $2 billion of these suspicious allegations.

In fifth place was Memorial Medical Center (a former for-profit nonprofit organization) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for allegations of denying cancer treatment to patients or demanding advance payments, even from people with insurance.

ProPublica has exposed the pattern of a once-celebrated oncologist malpractice and traces of suspicious deaths came in at number 4. Dr. Thomas C. Weiner of Helena, Montana, allegedly subjected one patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for more than a decade, among a host of other shocking revelations.

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

“Pharma companies have the same incentive to make a profit,” says Kelmar. “The healthcare industry is a business and companies will try to make the highest possible profit.”

At number 2 was the behemoth UnitedHealth and how it became the fourth largest company in the country. United physicians have reported pressure to reduce time spent with patients and make patients appear as sick as possible through aggressive medical coding tactics.

In a highly competitive year, first place went to Steward Health Care, whose CEO, Ralph de la Torre, has been accused of prioritizing private equity profits over patient care. His financial plans led to bankruptcy, leaving hospitals in ruins, workers laid off, and communities with less access to health care.

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

“What was going on here had been in the background for years. And if we knew about it, we have to ask ourselves, ‘Where are the regulators? Where are the people who should have known better?”