FALSE CLAIMS

A whistleblower takes on fraud and corruption in U.S. health care.

American life is increasingly defined by pivotal moments. When does one stand up to corruption that harms the vulnerable? For former Big Pharma insider Pratta, that moment came when she saw the sales practices around a breakthrough drug. Her book offers the captivating account of one woman’s turn from high-flying pharmaceutical sales rep to corporate whistleblower. The author guides readers through her decades of working as a top-level sales representative in pharmaceuticals and biotech. As she rises in the industry, mounting red flags within her company prompt her to collaborate with the U.S. Justice Department on a fraud and corruption case against her employer. The story centers on practices in one company as it ramps up a campaign to sell a novel drug to treat multiple sclerosis, but it notes how attendant kickbacks and dishonesty in drug pricing and sales practices are rampant across the industry. Few are spared in this account, and Pratta brings carefully detailed receipts gathered in the decade she spent helping build a federal case against her employer. The whistleblower’s story and internal conflict are laid out in full, from her idealism about health care at the beginning of her career through her disillusionment and fight to reveal the dangerous, money-driven rot in the system. It’s a tale of Pratta’s comingled survival of and dependency on Big Pharma, navigating a male-dominated industry rife with misogyny and sexual harassment while relying on the income her work provides to support her family as a single mother. The professional and the personal are interlaced clearly and with purpose.

The realities of America’s profit-driven health care system laid bare by an insider.