Pharmacies Fraud with False Cancer Drugs?

Pharmacies: fraud with wrong cancer drugs? The public prosecutor's office Mannheim determines against 70 pharmacies from completely Germany. They are said to have purchased cheap and possibly partially low-emission or anti-cancer medicines from abroad and sold them at high prices in Germany. It should have incurred a damage in "tens of millions".

The public prosecutor's office Mannheim determines against 70 pharmacies from completely Germany. They are said to have purchased cheap and possibly partially low-emission or anti-cancer medicines from abroad and sold them at high prices in Germany. It should have incurred a damage in "tens of millions".The pharmacists have it not easy at the moment: were recently denounced in media reports, the high margins and the density of pharmacies, so the pharmacists now seem to have a tangible scandal in their own ranks, which finds great media attention.

NDR info had reported that except in Lower Saxony at pharmacists in Celle and Brunswick, investigations were also in other major cities in Germany strained. Specifically, this should include pharmacies in Münster, Augsburg, Mainz, Wuppertal and Kiel.

All should cancer drugs, so-called cytostatics, cheaply purchased abroad and made illegal in Germany and have sold here more expensive by the foreign cytostatics with the health insurance have settled the conditions prevailing in our country. In part, the drugs should not have been allowed in Germany at all. The question is how the pharmacists then managed to bring the medication to the customer at all. According to media reports, it could even be that the active ingredient compositions bordered on the ineffective and possible additives have caused side effects. That would be, beyond the fraud, for the cancer patients a bitter news.

The health insurance companies are already reacting. A spokesman for the Techniker health insurance (TK) spoke of a damage for the funds in the "double-digit million range". More specifically, the Lower Saxony AOK: There was a sum of over two million euros called damage.

In Germany there are nearly 22,000 pharmacies. Of these, however, only about 500 are suitable to dilute the drugs so that they are individually tailored to the respective cancer patient. This means that, on confirmation of the current media reports and investigations, around one in seven pharmacies has cheated on cancer patients. For these pharmacies, there is even a separate association - the Association of Cytostatic Preparing Pharmacists. However, the supervision and control is held by a pharmacist. According to the Ärztezeitung, since 2007, investigations have been carried out by the health insurance funds and public prosecutor's offices, which have led to the current proceedings. (Thorsten Fischer, Naturopath Osteopathy, 17.04.2010)