It's the end of the year, and you know what we like at the end of the year -- lists.

From the top albums to the highest grossing movies to the biggest news stories -- nothing wraps up a year quite like a good list.

Well, here's a list on which you wouldn't want to be. Unless you're a Big Pharma company...then you probably just don't care. Because this "honor" has been almost 20 years in the making, and absolutely nothing's been done to curb the bad behavior that's earned them their spot at the top.

Consumer group Public Citizen just released the results of an analysis that spanned from 1991 to 2010. And Big Pharma is the number one...drum roll please...

Defrauder of the US government!

Please, hold your applause.

Big Pharma earned this title when it was revealed that pharmaceutical cases made up at least a full quarter (25 percent) of all federal False Claims Act payouts over the past decade. They beat out the common favorite -- the defense industry, which came in at 11 percent of payouts -- to gain the title.

The worst behavior has been in the past five years, though, as 73 percent of the settlements and 75 percent of the penalties took place in that time period alone. Settlements were for everything from overcharging government programs to anti-trust violations to kickbacks to concealing clinical trial findings. Busy, busy!

More than half of the fines paid out came from four companies, and they're biggies -- GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lily, and Schering-Plough -- $10.5 billion combined.

What's it all about? The director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen has a theory. He says drug companies are "desperate to maintain their high margin of profit" in a time when important new drugs are few and far between -- so they're willing to go to extreme measures including illegal promotion for unapproved uses and overcharging Medicare and Medicaid.

Never mind the health of the people for whom they're supposed to be creating these miracle drugs -- gotta line the pockets! And when they're facing larger and larger fines, which of course dig into those profits, well...you can see where it turns into a vicious cycle.

Will the cycle break in 2011? Let's just say I'm not holding my breath for a New Year's resolution of a turned leaf from the industry.

But I am allowing myself a little bit of optimism. Looking back at some of the stories of Big Pharma's bad behavior I've covered in the past couple of years, there seems to be more public awareness of what they've been up to. I'd like to think people aren't going to put up with them for much longer.

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