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by criddell 1368 days ago
They should lose patent protection on the drugs involved in the kickback scheme.
2 comments

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.