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by colechristensen 1368 days ago
And what is the right size?
2 comments

They should lose patent protection on the drugs involved in the kickback scheme.
They don’t need a new punishment.

If found guilty, you can be banned from doing any business with Medicare and Medicaid in the US - that’s already a part of the law and it’s the same as losing 50% of your revenue in perpetuity.

But it’s never used. Well, they used it on Pfizer, but the agreement was the ban was for a shell company they owned that didn’t actually sell any drugs. A sacrificial lamb if you will.

“A Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia and Upjohn Inc., which was acquired in 2003, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of felony misbranding.”

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2009/09/03/pfizer-must-p...

That actually might be an interesting deterrent worth pursuing. The President and perhaps Secretary of Commerce could probably tell the US Patent Office what to do, such as invalidate a patent. Although the constitution grants these discretionary monopolies, it doesn't stipulate how, with patents being a coincidence by Congress to fulfill that and the "limited time" aspect of that article of the constitution is already fulfilled.
enough so it's not just an expense they can pencil in the books for the next time they do it.
Everything is an expense no matter what. Even if you were to have prison time or capital punishment, that is just an expense to someone else. E.g. How much for a fall guy