Anti-Kickback Statute refers to a fraud and abuse law established to prevent any person receiving any financial return for the referral items or services. The Congress passed the original version of the Anti-Kickback Statute in 1972. But the original version only gave misdemeanor punishment to whoever receive kickbacks that are covered by the Medicare and Medicaid programs. As the ethical problem continued to grow within physicians, Congress strengthened the Anti-Kickback Statute in 1977, and it changed the misdemeanor to a felony. In 1997, Congress added a civil monetary penalty to the Anti-Kickback Statute. It using civil monetary to further prevent physicians from getting any financial return. The financial punishment was $50,000 for whoever…show more content… The lawmakers should modify the Anti-Kickback statute in such a way that the law will eliminate chances of occurrence of some business practices and payments that receive maximum protection under the "safe harbor" rules and regulations (1). It will include adjusting the components covered by these "Safe Harbor" rules. Safe Harbor is a law or provision of a statute that specifies a given conduct will not be considered to be violating a given rule. Safe Harbor has made some of the practices which go against the Anti-Kickback law to take place without any action being taken as they use the safe harbor law for defense and justification for their existence. Some of these practices to be fully eliminated from protection include space rental, discounts, electronic prescribing services and items, warranties, referral services, ambulatory surgical centers and practitioner recruitment. As long as the Safe Harbor covered components in the right place, then the Anti-Kickback law can be more reliable, and it can easy to practice in the U.S. healthcare…show more content… The challenges or issues that related to the payment system in the U.S. healthcare system can be solved by deleting the fee-for-service payment systems of the Anti-Kickback Law and further modifying it. Such as incorporate the use of episode-of-care payment system to replace the existing payment system (1). This new payment system will eliminate any undesirable incentives under the old payment system hence giving the providers the flexibility of improving quality and reducing costs. In addition, there is also the issue of compensating the physicians by volume instead of value. Many physicians in the United State are exploiting the patients by providing quick and low-quality medical services so that they can serve as many patients as possible without minding whether these patients are getting the value of the services delivered to them. Paying the physicians by volume instead of quality means that majority of the patients will end up receiving inferior quality health care services unless the government does something to change this situation. In my opinion, this problem could be easily solved if the lawmakers modify laws such as the Anti-Kickback to allow gain-sharing between physicians and the patients in hospitals. The success of gain-sharing will only be realized when the government starts giving some incentives such as bonuses, holidays and performance-based promotions
