McKesson Corporation, based in California, is a distributor of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. As a matter of fact, it's the nation's largest drug distributor and fifth largest corporation. It's so big that CBS News once described McKesson as “a company too big to prosecute.”
McKesson is one of the corporations blamed for the current opioid crisis. According to DEA investigator David Schiller, McKesson failed to provide oversight in its massive distribution of opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone to pharmacies that were actually drug ring fronts.
The DEA requires companies like McKesson to report suspicious activity, as when small online or rural pharmacies were ramping up opioid orders to levels well beyond the legitimate needs of the regional population but McKesson failed to report any suspicious order activity. In 2008, McKesson was fined just over $13 million for its failure to report and monitor its opioid shipments. For a company that earns around $200 billion a year, the fine was laughable. And the opioid shipments destined for the black market continued even after McKesson paid the small fine.
When the DEA again attempted to go after McKesson with a higher fine and possible jail sentences for executives, whistleblower Joe Ranazzisi claimed that attorneys in the Justice Department told the DEA to go easy on the pharmaceutical industry. And that's exactly what happened: two more years of the DEA begging McKesson to enter into compliance and then another fine, this one for $150 million. Schiller claimed there were “backdoor deals” being cut about which he wasn't informed or involved and that DEA attorneys refused to go to court against McKesson's legal team.
Congress then passed a law, the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act (HR471) further weakening the DEA. It limited the agency's ability to revoke licenses of non-compliant drug distributors like McKesson. Evidence shows, according to Lee Fang at The Intercept, that “...pharmaceutical supply companies were involved in every step of the legislative process — with a drug lobbyist even ghostwriting the original bill — the patients rights’ organizations supporting the effort have extensive ties to the drug industry.” (emphasis added)
GekeVenns illustrate the direct overlap of big business and big government, but for decades large corporations have banded together to fund trade associations that can then lobby on their behalf without the member corporations having to directly employ their influence peddlers. One such organization used by companies like McKesson is the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA). The HDA used lobbyists like Kristen Freitas to lobby for not only McKesson, but also Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, the two other major opioid suppliers, and to lobby for the passage of HR471.
FNMA = Federal National Mortgage Association
(Note that I'm not referring to the Federal National Mortgage Association as “Fannie Mae,” which is nomenclature that tends to distance the agency from the federal government and the fact that it is state-sponsored.)
Stay tuned next time for an even more damning venn on Cardinal Health and its use of the federal government to create the opioid crisis the government claims it's trying to fix.
