This post was prompted by acrimonious replies to my last diary accusing me of presenting biased, or even false, statements about the relationship between psychiatrists and Big PHARMA. I don't have time for in depth research, but here are a few quick items from other sources not cited before.
The Obama administration unveiled a website Tuesday that will shed some much-needed light on Big Pharma's relationship with doctors. Just not quite today.
Called Open Payments, it's a tool authorized by the Affordable Care Act that offers details on payments that drug companies and medical device makers give to physicians and medical school teaching hospitals.
The aim is to enable people to discover whether the doctors and hospitals they visit may have motives other than patients' best interests when they choose one drug or medical device over another that may be better or cheaper.
(From
Huffington Post, September 30, 2014 on recent government release of data as required for first time by the Affordable Care Act.)
One comment to me said drug reps don't dole out money like they used to. Apparently this is true, but only quite lately and in response to the anticipated ACA revelations. I also want to point out that while Big Pharma cites product development and research costs as the reason why drugs are more expensive in US than abroad--this is baloney. The reason is more likely the higher costs for lobbyist and marketing expenses.
As transparency increases and blockbuster drugs lose patent protection, drug companies have dramatically scaled back payments to doctors for promotional talks. This fall, all drug and medical device companies will be required to report payments to doctors.
by Charles Ornstein, Eric Sagara and Ryann Grochowski Jones
ProPublica, March, 2014.
More from Jeffrey Young in his Huffington post :
This first release of payments information reveals drug and device makers made 4.4 million payments to 546,000 doctors and more than 1,300 teaching hospitals from August through December of last year. In total, the payments were worth about $3.5 billion. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will add more numbers in the coming weeks, according to a press release. The first full-year accounting of payments won't come out until June. Drug and device companies are required to disclose this information under Obamacare.
The idea for Open Payments originated as the so-called Physician Payment Sunshine Act, the brainchild of lawmakers led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and then-Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) in 2007. Eventually, patients will have a clearer understanding of where their doctors' and hospitals' financial interests may lie.
In addition to promoting transparency in general, making these payments public also may serve to reduce potential conflicts of interest by making health care providers think twice before accepting money from those companies.
From another Huffington post dated September 30 titled
Doctors And Hospitals Raking In Billions From Big Pharma, Huge Data Trove Reveals:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. doctors and teaching hospitals received $3.5 billion from pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers in the last five months of 2013, according to the most extensive data trove on such payments ever made public.
The payments, disclosed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday, include consulting and speaking fees, travel, meals, entertainment and research grants. The names of the recipients of about 40 percent of the payments reported by companies were withheld because CMS had concerns about data inconsistencies.
A total of 546,000 physicians and 1,360 teaching hospitals received 4.4 million payments from healthcare companies.
I rest my case.