Pharmaceutical industry gifts to doctors right

23/06/2012

The process had caused a stir. The Federal Supreme Court should decide whether gifts from pharmaceutical companies to physicians are punishable. Many had hoped that the court would finally put a stop to the corrupt behavior in the healthcare industry. However, the Federal Court came to the conclusion that freelance doctors can not be convicted of corruption because they are neither employees nor officials of the health insurance.

Judges see lawmakers in duty
„The behavior of doctors and employees of pharmaceutical companies is not punishable by the current law, the court said, and the legislator has a responsibility to judge, „whether the corruption in the health service is punishable and by creating appropriate criminal offenses an effective criminal punishment is to be made possible. "Thus brought the basic decision (ref .: GSSt 2/11) of the federal court not the many-hoped regulation of the questionable agreements in the health service.

According to the judges divorce „the § StGB because physicians according to § Abs. SGB V, in particular in the prescription of medicines did not act as an official within the meaning of para. 2 StGB.“ Although the statutory health insurance funds are public administration bodies and perform tasks „according to the welfare state principle to a large extent“, Nevertheless, physicians with a cash contract are not appointed, „Tasks of public administration.“ Rather, the doctors are freelancers and no employees or officials of public authorities. The insured can rather make a free and individual choice. Accordingly, treatments by the doctors are subject to a personal trust that is beyond the scope of the statutory health insurance.

For Michael Späth, chairman of the representative meeting in the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Hamburg, the verdict, however, is a satisfaction: „We doctors are freelancers, we take the full risk. If you wanted full independence, as with judges, you would have to pay doctors doctors' pensions and should not go down the ladder. "Family doctors would already be recalcitrant if they prescribed excessively expensive medicines.

Background of the discussion is the common practice of pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers to consider physicians with more or less generous gifts, well-paid commissioned studies or invitations to specialist conventions at holiday resorts. (Ag)

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