Big pharma’s relationship with your doctor needs some U.S.-style sunshine

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/big-pharmas-relationship-with-your-doctor-needs-some-us-style-sunshine/article17676871/



Big pharma’s relationship with your doctor needs some U.S.-style sunshine
Andrew Boozary and Joel Lexchin
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Mar. 26 2014, 7:39 AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Mar. 26 2014, 12:41 PM EDT

Ours can be an overly polite country. If the recent Senate spending scandal taught us anything, it’s the value of openness in financial relations. Our American neighbors have come to understand this (somewhat), and now believe that such transparency should not be confined to Congressmen or Wall Street. Lost in the rancor surrounding the Affordable Care Act is a piece of legislation that leans on transparency to enlighten and safeguard patients from conflicts of interest. It’s titled the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, and it’s a rather unapologetic take on a relationship Canada has been relatively bashful about.

By the end of this year, President Barack Obama’s Sunshine Act will have drug companies report virtually every transfer of value to doctors and academic hospitals. With payments of as little as $10 dollars to be listed on a public website, this marks a serious undertaking in the world’s most sophisticated pharmaceutical market.

So, why exactly is the government going through all this?

The idea is to have any financial biases in the physician’s office out in the open. This might help ensure that the most responsible decisions are being made for the patient – and the patient only. While doctors are hard pressed to believe that pens or souvlaki lunches can alter their own prescription patterns, there are numerous studies to suggest otherwise. And the issue is not just your physician’s own pen, it’s also pharma’s influence on the experts who set the standards of care. In a recent commentary for the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. John Ioannidis pointed out that over half of the panelists on the American Heart Association guideline committee had financial ties with industry – this for recommendations that could see more than one billion people taking statins by 2020. Factor in a projected $1-trillion worth of statin sales and it’s easy to see what’s at stake: people and profits.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. DU Rec

[BrotherIvan]

2. I support this 100%

It's so damn obvious that doctors are taking kickbacks for medications. The drug companies are the ones educating them, because they are too overbooked to take the time to read up on new technologies. Enter the sales rep, who gives them any number of goodies for doing things like answering a questionnaire or reading a pamphlet, all be cause a straight payment isn't legal. And here we get sleazy designer drugs like statins which are completely useless and full of side effects being prescribed to everyone and their dog.

Anything that can change this corrupt system is a start and fine by me.