Pills in exchange for sex and money: 50 doctors were arrested in the United States

A total of 60 people, including 53 health professionals, were arrested in the United States Wednesday prescribe drugs with opioids (as painkillers and dangerous narcotics) many times in exchange for bad.

Among the defendants there 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurses and seven other licensed professionals, reported the Department of Justice.

The plot, in which more than 32 million pills, it would affect more than 350,000 illegal recipes in the states of West Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky.

US Attorney General William Barr and Health and Social Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar announced in a statement shares and related expenses of a joint investigation of the two offices.

"The epidemic of opioids is the most deadly drug crisis in the history of the United States, and the Appalachian region suffers the consequences more than any other region, "said Barr.

The prosecution asks up to 20 years in prison for people accused of illegally prescribing this type of substance in exchange for services that include payment in cash money or bad.

At least one of the accused doctors is directly related to the death of a patient for the abuse of these powerful drugs. There is also a dentist who he removed teeth from his patients unnecessarily to prescribe powerful painkillers that will calm your pain.

In addition, HHS announced that since last June, over 2,000 people, including 650 health care providers, have been excluded from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care programs for behaviors related to: opiate traffic and abuse.

Overdoses related to opiates in this country have produced more than 47,000 deaths in 2017, 36% of which were related to the use of prescription drugs, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For its part, a study published in the Scientific Journal of the American Medical Association predicts that by 2025 there will be more than 80,000 overdose deaths of opiates in the United States