Medical professionals often prescribe a wide range of medications to their patients. Ideally, the doctor should just consider the patient’s specific symptoms and determine what drug or medication will help them the most. The patient’s best interests should always come first, and there should not be any outside influence.
A pharmaceutical kickback scheme violates this basic principle. Essentially, doctors and physicians are paid illegal kickbacks that sway their decisions. If a doctor prescribes a certain medication, they know that they will get a direct payment from the company that makes it. This influences them to prescribe that medication more often than they would otherwise, and they may even prescribe it to patients who don’t need it—just to generate the kickback.
Are there any gray areas?
Yes, this can be a relatively complex area of the law. After all, as noted by industry professionals in the National Library of Medicine, it’s very common for pharmaceutical companies to pay U.S. physicians. Not every payment is a kickback.
Some payments are necessary simply because medical providers are selling these drugs to their patients, either directly or through insurance programs. So the key issue when there are criminal accusations is whether the doctor was influenced to prescribe that medication in a way that went against their patient’s best interests—such as telling someone to take a certain medication they don’t need. Even if it won’t have a negative impact on their health, if it’s just being done to generate kickbacks for the medical provider, it could lead to legal charges.
Those who are facing accusations of kickback schemes or other types of fraud must know what legal defense options they have.
