Tracking Pharma Gifts to Doctors
A slow wheel is beginning to turn in Congress in favor of forcing Big Pharma to disclose the amount of change it's dropping into doctors' pockets.
Megan Tady | August 9, 2007
While it's no secret that pharmaceutical companies lavish gifts on doctors -- everything from free notepads and pens to meals to the more extravagant paid trips or seminars -- most patients are in the dark about who, exactly, is courting their physicians. But Congress may be finally acknowledging this relationship, one important step toward creating a national gift registry so patients can track the perks Big Pharma is giving to their doctors.
In June, the nonprofit government watchdog Public Citizen testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging in favor of federal legislation that would require drug companies to disclose payments to doctors. But the group urged lawmakers, before jumping on the proposal, to examine a Petri dish of existing disclosure laws. Although four states and the District of Columbia already have disclosure laws on the books, the group says they are "inadequate" and do not give patients a clear picture of how money is changing hands.
The pharmaceutical industry spent an estimated $25.3 billion peddling prescription drugs in 2003, and much of that money went to physicians in the form of free samples, meals, conference fees, air fares, and continuing medical education activities. The only reins on Big Pharma's giveaway are voluntary regulations set by the American Medical Association (AMA) and adopted by the trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The AMA's ethical guidelines, which are supposed to "prevent inappropriate gift-giving practices," only sanction gifts valued at $100 or less.
The pharmaceutical industry is adamant that these gifts have no influence on which drugs physicians prescribe to their patients. But a growing body of evidence shows that drug companies' generosity may in fact be guiding the pen across the prescription pad.
"The drug industry doesn't spend $20 or $30 billion a year on advertising prescription drugs unless they believe it has an impact on doctors prescribing," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "You would probably like to know whether your doctor is getting no money, some money, a lot of money, or a huge amount of money, because it's going to influence what that doctor decides for you."
Public Citizen says a federal disclosure law would give patients the ability to track their doctors' financial ties to drug companies. "We need a strong, uniform national law that requires every state
these kinds of disclosures," Wolfe said. "State laws are better than nothing, but filled with problems."
In March, Wolfe (along with three other physicians and one medical student) published a paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that analyzed Vermont's and Minnesota's publicly available disclosures of payments made to doctors from 2002 to 2004. The researchers concluded that both states' laws failed "to provide the public with easy access to information about these payments," and were "insufficient for revealing the true patterns of payments."
In Vermont, patients can obtain
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=tracking_pharma_gifts_to_doctors
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