What Is...the Anti-Kickback Statute? Second Edition

The federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) is one of the best-known federal fraud and abuse statutes, due largely to its wide-ranging effects on business relationships in the health care, pharmaceutical, and medical device sectors. The newly-updated second edition of this primer explains how AKS is a criminal statute that prohibits transactions intended to induce or reward referrals for items or services reimbursed by the federal health care programs. It further details the anti-corruption statute and how it is designed to protect federal health care program beneficiaries from the influence of money on referral decisions and thus is intended to guard against overutilization, increased costs, and poor quality services.