Bribing Doctors, Making Millions

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How a drug company made millions pushing an opioid painkiller up to 100x stronger than morphine, as many on Wall Street looked the other way. FRONTLINE filmmaker Tom Jennings and Financial Times reporter Hannah Kuchler discuss their new investigation of Insys Therapeutics — from a jaw-dropping interview with a former sales director who admits to bribing doctors to prescribe the highly addictive drug Subsys, to how Wall Street propelled Insys’ success even as questions emerged about its practices, to what role drug companies’ pursuit of profits hasplayed in the opioid crisis: “I think that it's really interesting just how people are able to disconnect their actions from the consequences, especially in business,” Kuchler says.

With federal prosecutors using laws designed to catch mob bosses, Insys would ultimately become the first pharmaceutical company to have its top executives sentenced to prison time in connection with the opioid epidemic. For more on Insys’ spectacular rise and fall — and its consequences — watch the documentary Opioids, Inc. from FRONTLINE and the FT, and read our in-depth joint reporting — also available at ft.com/insys.

Correction: An earlier version of this description misstated the strength of Insys’s painkiller.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation,
0:03.6	committed to excellence in journalism,
0:05.6	and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne Hagler.
0:10.8	Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. and when you hear the word cancer their team is ready learn more at mass general
0:24.4	or slash cancer. John Kapoor has been arrested today in Arizona he was
0:31.5	basically accused of helping to fuel the opioid epidemic. he was a
0:35.0	on a billion air accused of helping to fuel the opioid epidemic. How is he a billionaire accused of pumping a powerful opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin
0:41.0	into our community.
0:42.0	It's not every day you see billionaires being arrested.
0:45.0	In 2017 federal agents launched a raid on the Arizona home of John Kapoor.
0:52.0	Kapoor's company makes subsists a fentanyl spray medication approved only for
0:57.1	several federal charges accused of racketeering, conspiracy, wire.
1:02.6	Kapoor and his employees were accused of defrauding insurers and bribing doctors to
1:07.4	prescribe a potent opioid drug at dangerously high doses.
1:12.0	The drug has been linked to hundreds of deaths and today
1:15.2	Insis executives including Kapoor have become the first big pharma
1:19.2	players to be sentenced to prison time for their role in America's opioid epidemic.
1:25.2	This story has from the early days for us has always been a microcosm of something much bigger.
1:31.9	Tom Jennings is the director of a new front line film about Incis
1:35.4	releasing on PBS today.
1:37.5	The film explores the rise and fall of the company and its role in the nation's
1:41.5	opioid crisis.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from GBH, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of GBH and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.