Lupron wasn’t selling. Poor Big Pharma really had to solve this terrible crisis. So its manufacturer cut doctors in. They rebranded it as a high-profit injection that urologists could administer themselves.
Medicare reimbursed $1,200 a shot (it’s now over $2,400 today). Doctors made hundreds of thousands annually reselling it for more.
And the bribes flowed. Free samples were illegally resold for cash. TAP Pharmaceuticals was later fined $875 million—but no one went to jail.
By the 1990s, Lupron brought in nearly a billion dollars a year.
