The 2024 “winners” of the annual Shkreli awards, given each year to perpetrators of the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction within the healthcare industry, have been released from the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare thinktank.
The recipients are chosen by a panel made up of health policy experts, clinicians, journalists and advocates. The awards are named after Martin Shkreli, the infamous “pharma bro” who rose to international notoriety after increasing the price of lifesaving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim 50-fold.
“All these stories paint a picture of a healthcare industry in desperate need of transformation. In 2024, healthcare practices were put in the spotlight,” Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, said during the ceremony.
“But doing these awards every year shows us that this is nothing new. We’re hoping that these stories illuminate what changes are needed.”
The No 10 spot this year went to the University of North Texas health science center in Fort Worth for allegedly neglecting to notify next of kin before selling body parts of deceased people.
An NBC News investigation uncovered that the school did not properly receive consent from the deceased or their family members before dissecting and distributing unclaimed bodies, despite the network finding that said family members were fairly easy to identify and contact.
The ninth spot was given to the outdated practice of baby tongue-tie cutting, which continues to be falsely touted as a cure for several ailments, from sleep apnea to nursing trouble, according to the New York Times.
Shady billing practices from Zynex Medical, a company specializing in nerve-stimulation devices used for pain management, took the No 8 slot. Patients received Zynex devices understanding the expense would be covered by insurance, according to a report from Stat News. Users then got unsolicited supplies of items like batteries and electrode pads delivered to them (often excessive quantities), which they ultimately got charged for. The report states that almost 70% of Zynex’s $184m in revenue in 2023 came from batteries and electrode pads.
“This is just classic over-billing. It’s fraud,” Patricia Kelmar, a senior director at the research group US Pirg and judge on the panel, said. “The patients feel that they owe the money because they already received the supplies. We see a lot of this kind of abuse within the pain-management field.”
The seventh spot was given to Sara England and her infant son, Amari Vaca. After the three-month-old experienced severe respiratory distress two months after open-heart surgery, doctors at Natividad medical center in Salinas, California, chose to have him transferred via air ambulance to a medical center in San Francisco. He recovered and Cigna later deemed the service “not medically necessary”. The family was given a $97,599 bill.
“This is happening everywhere,” Kelmar said. “The insurance denial here is that it should have been a ground ambulance instead of air, but how is the patient supposed to know that? This is a mother taking medical advice from the doctors.”
At No 6 was Medicare’s mass billing for urinary catheters. As many as 450,000 beneficiaries had bills for catheters submitted on their behalf in 2023, representing an 800% increase over previous years. Just seven suppliers were responsible for $2bn of these suspicious charges.
Taking the No 5 spot was Memorial medical center (a former non-profit turned for-profit) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for allegations of refusing cancer treatment to patients or demanding upfront payments, even from those with insurance.
ProPublica’s uncovering of a once-celebrated oncologist’s pattern of malpractice and trails of suspicious deaths came in at No 4. Dr Thomas C Weiner of Helena, Montana, reportedly subjected one patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for more than a decade, amid a myriad of other shocking revelations.
Lumakras, a cancer drug from Amgen that was granted accelerated FDA approval at a daily dose of 960mg, despite findings that a 240mg dose offered similar efficacy with reduced toxicity and risk of side effects, grabbed the third spot.
“Pharma companies have that same incentive to get a return on profits,” said Kelmar. “The healthcare industry is a business, and businesses will try to get the highest profits possible.”
At No 2 was the behemoth that is UnitedHealth and how it’s become the fourth-largest business in the nation. Doctors for United have reported pressure to reduce time spent with patients, and make patients seem as sick as possible through aggressive medical coding tactics.
In a highly competitive year, the top spot went to Steward Health Care, whose CEO, Ralph de la Torre, is accused of prioritizing private-equity profits over patient care. His financial scheming led to bankruptcy, leaving hospitals in shambles, employees laid off and communities with less healthcare access.
“I want to say that this is our backyard,” said Saini.
“What was going on here was on the grapevine for many years. And if we knew about it, then we have to ask: ‘Where are the regulators? Where are the people who should’ve known better?”
