Already, numerous companies including Novartis and Salix Pharmaceuticals have been investigated and forced to pay out multi-million dollar settlements. This is after their speaker programs were found to be in violation of the anti-kickback statute, designed to prevent pharmaceutical companies offering remuneration in return for doctors drumming up business. The sheer enormity of the pay-outs pharmaceutical companies have been forced to pay has apparently not halted the practice. Novartis settled with the federal government for using speaker programs as a cover for bribes from 2002 in 2011 and was forced to pay $600 million. Amazingly, they only agreed to look into cutting back on these practices in the future. Clearly, the benefits outweigh the costs... Part of the authority of doctors rests on their supposed altruism. People trust doctors and follow their advice because they are supposed to be driven by the interests of the patient, rather than those of their pocketbooks. If patients are unable to trust their doctors’ prescriptions, the authority of the medical profession as a whole, including the important role it plays in society, comes into question. Is it any wonder that so many people have begun to turn away from proven healthcare interventions like vaccines if pharmaceutical companies are so ethically blasé?
Ashley Frawley, 'Docs for sale: US government issues rare fraud alert as Big Pharma spends billions bribing medics to prescribe their drugs', Russia Today
