Transparency and Accountability
The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration will require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment. Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public. Companies will be subject to a penalty up to $10,000 for each payment they fail to report. A company that knowingly fails to report payments will be subject to a penalty up to $100,000 for each violation, up to a total of $1 million a year.
Critics and researchers have found evidence that such payments influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices. Consumer advocates agree that disclosures increased the likelihood that doctors would make decisions in the best interests of patients, without regard to the doctors’ financial interests.
Large numbers of doctors receive payments from drug and device companies every year — sometimes into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars — in exchange for "providing advice and giving lectures". The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.
Medicare and Medicaid, the programs for older Americans, the disabled and the poor, spend more than $100 billion a year on drugs and devices.
