WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd August, 2018) The US government unveiled a new weapon in an attempt to reduce the availability of prescription opioids, injunctions against doctors that approve painkillers for patients without a medical need, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in a speech.
"I am announcing the first ever civil injunctions under the Controlled Substances Act against doctors," Sessions told law enforcement officers in the state of Ohio on Wednesday. "These injunctions - a temporary restraining order - will stop immediately these doctors from prescribing, without waiting for a criminal prosecution."
The injunctions targeted two physicians in Ohio, a state hard hit by an epidemic of drug overdose deaths, Sessions explained.
The first doctor, Michael Tricaso, is accused of selling thousands of Dollars worth of narcotics without a legitimate medical purpose, Sessions said. Tricaso allegedly sold the opioid-based painkiller Percocet to undercover Drug Enforcement Agents (DEA), he said.
The second doctor, Gregory Gerber, prescribed "countless opioids" without a legitimate medical purpose and then submitted false claims to a Federal drug program known as Medicare Part D, Sessions claimed. Gerber also accepted $175,000 in kickbacks from a company that makes a fentanyl drug intended for cancer patients, a drug he prescribed to patients who did not have cancer.
A Justice Department lawsuit is seeking up to $700,000 in damages from Tricaso, while the department estimates Gerber submitted false claims to Medicare totaling $2.8 million, Sessions added.
The injunctions were the first issued under a Justice Department program named Prescription Interdiction & Litigation (PIL) Task Force, which monitors prescriptions, Sessions said. The attorney general explained that the Justice Department has a goal of reducing opioid-based prescriptions by one-third.
A National Prescription Audit indicates that opioid prescriptions had fallen by 11 percent this year following a 7 percent decline in 2017, Sessions noted.
