Is your doctor accepting drug money?
posted Wed, 23 Mar 2011Each year, doctors receive millions of dollars from big pharmaceutical companies. In exchange, the doctors effectively become drug pushers—by promoting particular, name brand prescription drugs to their patients.
Kickbacks can range from small tokens like pens and free lunches to extravagant gifts and even cash. As recently reported in the LA Times, Bristol-Myers Squibb is being sued by the state of California for allegedly bribing doctors with money, luxury suites at Lakers games and “happy hours” with the players.
In 2009 and 2010, pharmaceutical companies paid more than $250 million to some 17,000 doctors and nurses across the country, according to a database compiled and published by the nonprofit, investigative journalism group ProPublica.
ProPublica created this information for the public’s benefit. You can do a search on their site to find out if your physician has received drug company money. Keep in mind that only eight pharmaceutical companies are in the database so far. Typically such payments are kept quiet, but some of the companies have been ordered by the government to disclose this information.
The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (a provision of the new health care law set to go into effect in 2013) mandates that drug companies report such expenditures. As a part of the Act, all payments to doctors by pharma will be listed on a government website.
Some states have already enacted legislation to ban gifts from pharma to health care providers. In any case, consumers have a right to know about potential prescribing bias. They may be needlessly paying more for a brand name drug when there are cheaper alternatives available. It’s important to note that in addition to issues of potential prescribing bias, these kickbacks also contribute unnecessarily to the high cost of prescription drugs.