What do the Insys convictions mean for pharma?

All five of the former Insys Therapeutics executives facing federal charges were convicted yesterday of running a nationwide conspiracy to bribe doctors into prescribing a dangerous fentanyl painkiller. Among them was John Kapoor, Insys’s founder and former CEO, making him one of the few pharma C-suiters to ever get punished for his company’s actions.

That could signal a sea change in justice, STAT’s Matthew Herper writes. More often than not, top-level executives are protected by bureaucratic complexity and legal firepower. Kapoor’s conviction is “good news for anyone hoping that we can discourage future pharmaceutical entrepreneurs from lining their pockets while hurting patients,” Herper writes.

But STAT’s Ed Silverman is a little less optimistic. The Insys case is extraordinary both because the company marketed the kind of painkillers that have stoked a national crisis and because it is relatively small and thus more vulnerable to prosecution. “If we really want to put a halt to wayward practices in the pharmaceutical industry, the feds need to make examples of more executives — not just those who peddle opioids,” according to Silverman.