Disguised Kickback Scheme In The Homecare Industry- Really?

In the latest HME News there is an interesting, if not curious write-up concerning the Office of Inspector General issuing a (its not clear) warning to an alleged wheelchair manufacturer that “providing dealers (my words) with advertising and reimbursement advice may not be a good idea - allegedly because of the possibility of “kickbacks”.”

Well this is interesting from a couple of perspectives. One is that manufacturers today represent to industry openly that they champion their (reimbursement) cause with the government, and that “cooperative” advertising that helps drive customers to dealers is also done openly on TV etc.

The authorities go on to state; “There is a substantial risk that the proposed arrangement would be a disguised kickback scheme having as one of it purposes the generation of business payable by a federal healthcare care program for the manufacturer.”

It’s good of the “manufacturer” to share this warning with industry…

From an ethics point of view a lot of us were brought up to believe that if you were confident enough about your position and published it on the front page of your newspaper you were probably not doing anything wrong.

Seems this may not be the case here.

(Right or wrong, for better or worse there are several major countries in the world that don’t seem to have an issue with the above practice) - do you?