Biogen agrees to pay $900M to settle drug kickbacks allegations

I really take issue with &quot;settlements&quot; of such a scale that don&#x27;t equate to an admission of guilt. It&#x27;s essentially buying a <i>get of jail free</i> card. If any individual were facing criminal charges, they would have to plea guilty before any easy-way-out is considered.<p>If it would have taken a billion dollars in legal fees to prove your innocence, I&#x27;m going to take a chance and suggest that these claims likely weren&#x27;t &quot;false&quot;.

Anyone going to jail?<p>Money means nothing if they get charged a fraction of what they made in profits...

The interesting thing is that what they did wouldn’t even be a crime if the doctors they paid didn’t work with Medicare patients. The anti kickback statute only applies to government funded health insurance programs. These same laws are also why manufacturers can’t offer copay assistance programs to people on Medicare. Applying these laws everywhere could probably reduce waste dramatically.<p>Also there’s a very high ROI and not very often discussed career path: Work in sales at big pharma company or home health care company or really any compare that bills Medicare, find False Claim Act violations and a lawyer to represent you, and collect 15-30% of settlement (should be 8 to 9 figures if you played your cards right).

Did physicians go to jail for endangering patients? Lose their license at least?<p>“The Pharmacist” on Netflix really opened my eye to how above the law doctors are.

How much of this goes to the victims who were inappropriately prescribed drugs? 90%, 95% 100% ?

&gt; paying kickbacks to physicians to induce them to prescribe Biogen drugs<p>I blame the ones that take the money.