Courses/CS 461/Museum of unintended consequences/Doctors paid to prescribe drugs

From CSWiki

This is too obvious. From the New York Times.

Federal laws bar drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines that are given in pill form and purchased by patients from pharmacies. But companies can rebate part of the price that doctors pay for drugs, … which they dispense in their offices as part of treatment. … Doctors receive the rebates after they buy the drugs from the companies. But they also receive reimbursement from Medicare or private insurers for the drugs, often at a markup over the doctors’ purchase price.

This seems like clearly failed structure. It makes sense to prevent drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe drugs. It also makes sense to prevent doctors from selling drugs for a profit. (I don't know whether there really is such a law, but one would suppose there should be.) In both cases, there is a clear conflict of interest. But this case seems to get around both of these restrictions, but in a very awkward way. The doctors don't act as merchants when they sell the drugs to patients — or to patients' insurance carriers. They simply pass them on directly with no obvious markup. But then they get a discount from the drug companies after the fact. That seems to be too clearly a violation of the spirit of avoiding a conflict of interest to be allowed. But apparently it is.

By the way, the name of this page is the first line of the story in the New York Times.

Two of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines … .