Roswell Daily Record
Drug-pricing suit affects NM THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Vol. 121, No. 180 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
INSIDE NEWS
WASHINGTON (AP) — High unemployment isn’t going away — not as long as the economy grows as slowly as it did in the April-June quarter. Weak consumer spending held growth to an annual rate of just 1.5 percent, even less than the 2 percent rate in the first quarter. And few expect the economy ... - PAGE A6
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — McKesson Corp. will pay $151 million to 29 states and the District of Columbia to settle a lawsuit alleging the company inflated prices of hundreds of prescription drugs, causing state Medicaid programs to overpay millions of dollars in reimbursements, officials said Friday.
IT’S NOT GOING AWAY
July 28, 2012
The agreement with San Francisco-based McKesson, one of the country’s largest drug wholesalers, settles allegations the company deliberately inflated drug prices by as much as 25 percent from 2001
The federal government settled its portion of the lawsuit in April for more than $187 million.
to 2009. An investigation by state and federal agencies found that McKesson overbilled for more than 1,400 brand-name drugs from 2001 to 2009. They include commonly prescribed medications such as Adderall, Allegra, Ambien, Celexa, Lipitor, Neurontin, Prevacid, Prozac and Ritalin, officials
said. California will receive about $24 million of the settlement, said state Attorney General Kamala Harris. That money will go to the state Medicaid program, not recipients. “In these difficult budget times, it is crucial that California’s scarce public resources support the urgent needs of our state,” Harris
said in a statement. “We cannot allow dollars meant for patients to be diverted to inflate corporate profits.” McKesson representative Kris Fortner said the claims against the company are without merit, but “given the inherent uncertainty of litigation, we determined that this settlement was in the best interest of our employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders.” “We did not manipulate drug prices and did not violate any
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• Feds bust 3 Roswell businesses • Local officials not happy with Alamo ... • County Commission approves final budget • Council OKs $87M budget • ‘Only one more step to go’
INSIDE SPORTS Mark Wilson Photo
Kids participating in Earth Camp from A to Z shovel rocks to cover a weed barrier at the Roswell Boys & Girls Club, Friday morning.
28 Earth Rangers complete KRB camp NOAH VERNAU RECORD STAFF WRITER
Children who participated in Keep Roswell
OLYMPICS OPENING CHEEKY
LONDON (AP) — The queen and James Bond gave the London Olympics a royal entrance like no other Friday in an opening ceremony that rolled to the rock of the Beatles, the Stones and The Who. And the creative genius of Danny Boyle spliced it all together. Brilliant. Cheeky, too. The highlight of the Oscarwinning director’s $42 million show was pure movie magic, using trickery to make it seem that Britain’s beloved 86-year-old Queen ... - PAGE B1
TODAY’S • • • •
OBITUARIES
Lona Wall Guisel Perales Marretta Lee Parker Esther Salas - PAGE A7
HIGH ...94˚ LOW ....67˚
TODAY’S FORECAST
CLASSIFIEDS..........B6 COMICS.................B3 FINANCIAL .............A6 GENERAL ..............A2 HOROSCOPES ........A8 LOTTERIES ............A2 OPINION ................A4 SPORTS ................B1 WEATHER ..............A8
Beautiful’s Earth Camp this week were provided all sorts of lessons and activities in recycling and conservation, working their way toward becom-
Earth ing certified Rangers, Friday. KRB coordinator Renee Roach said the camp included 28 children ages 10 to 12, who were all
Peterson Dam on brink of failure
LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) — A century-old dam in northern New Mexico that holds a city’s water supply is riddled with holes and on the brink of failure. About 60 million gallons of water is leaking through the 101-year-old Peterson Dam in Las Vegas every year. Consultants have recommended that the dam be raised to provide the city with 1,200 acre-feet, or more than 391 million gallons, of additional storage, a project estimated at $20 million. Its current capacity is 211 acre-feet, or 68 million gallons — a small fraction of the water the city uses in a year. The average household in
Las Vegas uses 48,000 gallons of water a year. Gov. Susana Martinez toured the dam this week, saying she would make the dam’s repair a priority in the next legislative session with a proposed $2 million in funding, the Las Vegas Optic reported. “The people of Las Vegas have to start putting pressure on their legislators to do the right thing,” she said. Peterson Dam is a symbol of the city’s dilapidated water infrastructure, but officials say the entire system needs an overhaul. The city already is planning stark water rate increases to fund improvement proj-
JULIA BERGMAN
At any given time John Ford sports multiple hats. At once he is father, husband, retired National Guardsman, author, actor, amateur Egyptologist and a history buff. Yet he says, “Of all the careers I have followed in my lifetime, I find I am best qualified for retirement.” Ford abides by one simple truism and that is to just live his life and enjoy every single day. He carries one other motto with him, adopted from his father, “Stay beautiful.” Ford was born on Feb. 4, 1930, in St. Paul, Minn. He shares few words of his time growing up in Minnesota, other than “cold and poor.” His mother died when he was 4 years old, and his father, a saw
ects that go beyond the dam and could cost $120 million over 40 years. Utilities director Ken Garcia said the rates likely will go up 26 percent in each of the next three years, following by a 7 percent hike in the 2015-16 fiscal year. The increase would allow the city to tap into $45 million in bond funding for the projects. Garcia told Martinez that the proposed increases could be lessened if the city secures $10 million in state and federal funding. Rebuilding the dam will take at least two years. In the meantime, the city will
offered valuable insight on the importance of caring for the planet. “For their generation,
See CAMP, Page A3
Defense: Holmes received therapy
See LAWSUIT, Page A3
DENVER (AP) — The former graduate student accused in the deadly Colorado movie theater shooting was being treated by a psychiatrist at the university where he studied, the first indication that he may have sought help before the rampage that killed 12 people and wounded 58. Attor neys for James Holmes, 24, made the disclosure in a court motion Friday as they sought to discover the source of leaks to some media outlets that he sent the psychiatrist a package containing a notebook with descriptions of an attack. The motion said the leaks jeopardized Holmes’ right to a fair trial and violated a judge’s gag order. Holmes’ lawyers added that the package contained communications between Holmes and his psychiatrist that should be shielded from public view. The document describes Holmes as a “psychiatric See THERAPY, Page A3
DOT training
Mark Wilson Photo
A New Mexico Department of Transportation observer oversees National Guard members as they train on heavy equipment to earn their operators certifications in an annual 2-week training course near the armory in Roswell, Wednesday.
John Ford: Guardsman, author, actor, Egyptologist, and a piper, too RECORD STAFF WRITER
INDEX
Julia Bergman Photo
John Ford
See DAM, Page A3
said.
maker, raised Ford and his older brother Homer. Ford was raised during the World War II era, and was just 11 when the war started. He remembers at that time, “the way things changed so rapidly, the way people changed. Everybody went to work and everybody was galvanized. The whole country was galvanized, I remember that, to win that war because we had been attacked,” he said. In 1949, Ford enlisted in the National Guard. A year
later the Korean War began, and in January 1951, Ford was called up to active duty. Ford served as a military policeman and an infantryman. He earned the rank of sergeant fairly quickly “because I did my job.” Today, Ford says he’d like to retur n to South Korea to see how it’s changed. “It was terrible when I was there, just terrible. The country was ravaged, orphans all over the place and a horrible mess. I’m kind of curious to see how they’ve rebuilt it,” he
In 1958, Ford went to work for the Minnesota Department of Employment. “The third-worst problem a person can have, a man, is his family’s health, his own health and then being out of a job. That’s the way most men think. Anyway, at that time they did,” he said. Ford recalls one man who he encountered who had lost all but the thumb and pinky finger on his left hand from his work with a punch press. While the man had many years of experience, his injury provided him a challenge in securing a job. See SPOTLIGHT, Page A3