It has already happened, the bad story of doctors who pocket cash prizes or trips or various donations, offered by some company manufacturing medicines, as long as they prescribe drugs from that company. It's happened before, and now it's happening again. So it is a constant. So let's take a good look at what it reveals to us. First of all, this time it is news that concerns many areas of Italy, practically all of them: there are 67 suspects, they belong to public but also private structures, and the accusations are of corruption, instigation to corruption, fraud against the National Health Service, false and – never heard of an accusation with this name before, but that doesn't mean that the conditions weren't there – comparison.
"Comparaggio" suggests an association of unscrupulous businessmen who do business, making sure that in the negotiation of two the interest of one produces an interest of the other. The cities where the searches were carried out are indicated in the newspapers in alphabetical order, and range from the deep North to the deep South: Ancona, Ascoli Piceno, Bari, Brescia, Cagliari, Caserta, Chieti, Ferrara, Florence, Frosinone, Genoa, Lucca, Mantua, Messina, Milan, Naples, Padua, Palermo, Pavia, Perugia, Pescara, Rome, Terni, Turin, Trento, Trieste, Verona and Viterbo.
What happens, according to the allegations? It happens that these doctors would have accepted (I repeat: according to the allegations) cash, or Ipads, or clothes, or hospitality in luxurious hotels, or trips to exotic lands, or jewels, or other forms of compensation, from representatives of a company pharmaceuticals, in exchange for the prescription of particular medicines from that same company, even to those who do not need them or in forms superior to need. Those medicines contain growth hormones. In some cases, the prescription would have been abundant even for children, with the result that the children were 'inflated' artificially, without any benefit.
