CNN Exposes Big Pharma’s Payouts to Doctors
A popular news agency called CNN made a video exposing Big Pharma payouts to doctors in exchange for prescribing their new drug products.
(CNN) — Drug industry critics celebrated last month when Pro Publica announced a new searchable database called “Dollars for Docs.”
No longer will worried patients have to rely on reporters to expose doctors on the payroll of the drug industry. Now patients can do it themselves. With a few simple keystrokes, anyone with a computer can search the “Dollars for Docs” database to see how much money their doctor is getting from pharma.
For decades pharmaceutical companies have given doctors gifts and money as ways of getting them to prescribe their drugs. During the flush 1990s, companies began ramping up these gifts dramatically — entertaining doctors at expensive restaurants, sending them to conferences in exotic locations, even writing checks disguised as “unrestricted educational grants.”
When PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group, began cracking down on these gifts in 2002 in response to public criticism, the influence game began to take another shape. Today, pharmaceutical companies influence doctors by inviting them to be paid speakers or consultants — or as the companies call them, “thought leaders.”
Read more at http://cnn.com/video/?/video/health/2010/11/23/ac.medical.money.tracking.cnn
Below is a listing of the top pharmaceutical companies ranked by U.S. sales in 2009 as well as smaller companies that have disclosed, or plan to disclose, payments. The chart compares each company’s disclosures to the requirements of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, under which every company must report a range of information to the federal government beginning in 2013.
Companies highlighted in pink (or at least one of their subsidiaries) are required to disclose doctor payments as part of settlement agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice.
http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/companies
Here in the Philippines, we have a generics law. Hopefully your doctor is observing the generics law and writing the generic equivalent in the prescription he writes to you.