This Year’s Shkreli Awards: Here’s Who Made the List

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“We are dumbfounded by the amount of profiteering,” Lown Institute president says

by
Cheryl Clark, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
January 7, 2025

A CEO and former surgeon who pocketed $250 million as the health system he led went bankrupt and a Medicare Advantage insurance company accused of fraud for making its patients seem sicker topped the list of the 10 winners of the Lown Institute’s “Shkreli Awards” for 2024.

Also named in ignominy are a pharmaceutical company that marketed a dose of a cancer drug that was $180,000 more expensive per patient per year than a lower dose that was just as effective and less toxic, and a once-celebrated Montana oncologist who allegedly treated a patient for a cancer that a medical examiner ultimately determined he didn’t have.

The annual awards are named after “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who was sentenced to 7 years in prison and fined $7.4 million for securities fraud after obtaining the manufacturing rights to the anti-parasitic drug pyrimethamine (Daraprim), whose price he marked up by more than 5,000%.

“Every year we are dumbfounded by the amount of profiteering” that candidates for these awards engaged in, Vikas Saini, MD, president of the Lown Institute, told MedPage Today. “It’s always a mixture of out-and-out fraud as well as just general venality and grasping.”

This set of Shkreli Award winners is the institute’s eighth installment, but the level of outrageousness in the actions of this year’s candidates is the most disturbing, Saini said. There are “regulators and people in positions of authority whose jobs they are supposed to do, but instead they turn and look the other way. A lot of this stuff that happens is because there’s no cops on the beat.”

What the Shkreli Awards show, he added, “is that maybe they’re all sitting in their offices on their laptops rather than walking the streets and collaring these crooks.”

This year’s judges included physicians, patient advocates, health policy experts, health journalists, and former hospital executives. Saini noted that there were many candidates worthy of honorable mentions and also-rans who didn’t quite make the list but easily could have.

The Shkreli Awards often call out people and companies that were once well-respected in their fields, Saini said. “These things happen because incentives get tilted in the direction of money and profit to the point that a lot of people who should know better end up losing their way,” he added.

The awards’ selections were based on harmful policies or practices revealed in reports by major news organizations.

In order, this year’s 10 Shkreli Award winners are:

1. “Wreck-it” Ralph de la Torre, MD, CEO of Steward Health Care

De la Torre, a former surgeon, “allegedly orchestrated a dramatic healthcare debacle by prioritizing private equity profits over patient care,” the Lown Institute said, noting that Steward was forced into bankruptcy, its hospitals were gutted, employees were laid off, and communities were left underserved, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

In September, de la Torre left Steward, after pocketing $250 million in payments over the last 4 years. After he declined to appear at a Senate hearing despite a congressional subpoena, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee voted to hold him in civil and criminal contempt, and he is now the subject of a federal criminal investigation.

2. UnitedHealth Group

The largest company providing health insurance to Medicare Advantage enrollees, UnitedHealth “exploits its vast physician network to maximize profits, often at the expense of patients and clinicians,” the institute said. According to reporting by STAT News, clinicians are pressured to reduce their time with patients and aggressively code so patients appear as sick as possible to generate higher revenues from Medicare.

“This tactic may have allowed the company to take tens of billions in additional payments from taxpayers over the past decade,” the institute said. The company is facing a federal lawsuit and an anti-trust investigation.

Saini noted that the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last month as he attended an investor’s conference in Manhattan prompted a huge public outcry against the company’s practices. This “should be a wake-up call to everybody,” he said. “People are not fooled about what’s going on, that it’s another piece of the corrosion of the social fabric.”

3. Amgen

Although a previous trial showed that a 960-mg dose of Amgen’s cancer drug sotorasib (Lumakras) extended life by a month or more, a more recent trial showed that a 240-mg dose was just as effective, with reduced toxicity. Yet Amgen continues to market the higher dose, which costs $180,000 more per patient per year, according to a report by KFF Health News. A pharmacologist interviewed called sotorasib “a poster child for incredibly bad development.”

4. Thomas C. Weiner, MD

According to reporting by ProPublica, Weiner, an oncologist at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena, Montana, allegedly subjected a patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for over a decade. When the patient died, the medical examiner found no sign of cancer, leaving chemotherapy as the likely cause of death. Weiner also allegedly prescribed high doses of barbiturates to facilitate death in seriously ill patients who may not have been near death.

5. Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico

The private equity-owned hospital is facing accusations that it refused cancer care to patients or demanded advance payment, even from those with insurance. This was despite promotional literature promising to deliver care regardless of patients’ ability to pay, according to NBC News.

6. “Pretty in Pink Boutique”

More than 450,000 Medicare beneficiaries were billed for urinary catheters in 2023 compared with about 50,000 in previous years, the New York Times reported. The increase in billing included $2 billion in charges by just seven high-volume suppliers. When the Times investigated these suppliers, it found one named “Pretty in Pink Boutique” but there was no medical business at the address listed and its phone number reached an auto body shop.

7. Cigna

When an infant in Salinas, California, needed immediate specialty care, he was put on a ventilator and flown by air ambulance to a hospital in San Francisco, according to a report in KFF Health News. The bill for the 86-mile flight was $97,599, which Cigna, the family’s insurer, refused to cover, finding the service “not medically necessary.” The family’s appeal was denied.

8. Zynex Medical

The company, which makes nerve stimulation devices for pain management, reportedly sent unsolicited supplies of batteries and electrode pads to patients, which were said to be covered by insurance. However, the quantities often exceeded what the patients needed or were at inflated costs, and insurance companies didn’t pay, leaving patients with surprise bills, STAT News reported.

A former Zynex employee told STAT that “I feel like during my time there, I had a leading role in making people’s lives worse.”

9. Tongue-Tie Procedures

Despite no evidence showing effectiveness, the procedure is being touted by lactation consultants and dentists as a cure for multiple issues, including breastfeeding difficulties and constipation, according to a report by the New York Times. One provider said he performed as many as 100 procedures a week at a cost of $900 each, which were rarely covered by insurance.

10. The University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth

This academic center allegedly dissected and distributed unclaimed bodies without consent, despite the fact that family members were easy to identify and reach, according to an NBC News report. The program has since suspended its body donation program and those responsible have been terminated.