|
|
| |
|
Site best viewed with
© R. Mark Sink |
|
|
Drug Money Managers
Drug pushers work behind the law in an effort to enhance their products
for sale to the blind public, which in all rights, is a criminal
activity.
 |
Drug Company Payments Still a Public Secret
21 March 2007 - By Laura Owings - abcnews.go.com
Financial Gifts to Doctors are often Substantial, but
Details Remain Vague
March 21, 2007 — Despite laws created to specifically identify the
financial gifts doctors receive from pharmaceutical companies,
major obstacles remain in providing that information to the public.
Currently, five states and Washington, D.C., require that payments the
pharmaceutical industry makes to doctors be reported. Only two
states, Vermont and Minnesota, provide that data to the public. In a
first of its kind study from the Journal of the American Medical
Association, researchers looked at the records from these two states
from 2002 to 2004 to examine how their laws have been executed.
Surprisingly, their findings reveal these payments often involve
substantial sums, and the details of the transactions remain vague
or unavailable.
Laws Aren't Working
The intention of this study was to find a true examination of how
money changes hands between the medical and pharmaceutical industries.
"What we really found was laws aren't working," says study
author Joseph Ross, an instructor in the department of geriatrics at
the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
"We knew there would be substantial sums of money changing hands
between doctors and companies," he says. "What was surprising was how
poorly information was made available to the public, to
researchers, to anyone."
Ross describes obstacles in obtaining records that made the process
virtually impossible, or left the team with vaguely worded
explanations. It was slowly revealed that where states were trying to
promote disclosure, drug companies were circumventing the law.
Purpose of Payment
"Once you actually get to data, you notice vague terms
in description of gift purpose," says Ross.
Payments that are made to physicians that involve drugs or items
not yet on the market, are exempt under the term "trade secret" in
Vermont. |
|
|
Comment: There are many new drugs on the
market opening up a vast hole in the policing of fraud in the system.
For example, when the company GlaxoSmithKline publicly revealed its
total value of payments from 2002 through 2004, it claims zero
dollars spent.
Yet, during that same period, Vermont's attorney general cited the
drug giant as making more payments to doctors than any other
pharmaceutical company in the state. The reason for the
discrepancy: GlaxoSmithKline designated all of its payments as
trade secrets. Similar inconsistencies
were seen in Minnesota as well. The company Amgen was noted as paying
doctors zero dollars in 2002 and zero dollars in 2004. In 2003,
however, Amgen disclosed more than $4 million in payments.
"To designate every payment made as a trade secret … seems
improbable," says Ross. What was most surprising to the researchers
was the lack of resources maintaining these laws. "There is no
enforcement, no follow-up," notes Ross. "No one has examined these
documents."
Public Deserves to Know
These are just two examples of what is clearly a problem in the effort
to reveal where these dollars are going.
"They prefer not to put into the public domain what doctors they're
sharing this information with," says Dr. Harlan Krumholz, an associate
professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. "That allows drug
companies to withhold information."
If your doctor is getting money from a company for which he or she
writes prescriptions, "the public should know," he says.
When doctors are given free pens or writing pads by a drug sales
representative, the act seems harmless.
But the practice of sending physicians on expensive vacations or
treating them to lavish meals raises more ethical questions.
When that doctor returns to the office and prescribes that company's
drug, does he or she do that with the patient's best interest in mind?
"There is a lot of money changing hands," says Krumholz. "The
legislation building on the path of experience needs to improve."
To do that, the relationship between the doctors and the
pharmaceutical companies needs to become transparent.
"If both parties think this payment is appropriate," says Ross, "then
this information should be made available to the public."
|
|
 |
|
Messages From Earth |
|
A synopsis of the first 5 hours in the series Planet Earth.
Read more
On the dark side of human nature.. [PDF]
Reasons
Logical Explanations
© Red Pill Press
|
|
 |
|
