Doctors Got $6.5 Billion From Drug, Device Makers in U.S.

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

by Caroline ChenZachary Tracer
June 30, 2015 — 1:57 PM EDT
Updated on June 30, 2015 — 2:10 PM EDT

U.S. doctors and teaching hospitals got $6.49 billion from drug and medical-device makers in 2014, according to new government data on the financial links between the companies and the people who prescribe their products.

The data released Tuesday range from the royalties paid to hospitals to help develop products to fees provided to medical experts to speak at a dinner with colleagues. The payments are listed in two broad categories: money to fund research and payments to entertain doctors or compensate them for consulting or other non-research purposes.

By disclosing information on the payments, the U.S. is seeking to bring transparency to the financial relationships between drugmakers and health care providers. Those ties can influence how physicians practice, even if they aren’t aware of it, said Jason Dana, a professor at Yale School of Management who studies decision-making.

“If we have a financial incentive to believe something or conclude something, we kind of trick ourselves into thinking it’s true,” he said. “And we’re not always aware we’re doing it.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-30/doctors-got-6-5-billion-in-14-from-drug-device-makers-in-u-s-

[SoapBox]

1. Crooked and corrupt.

End of that message.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. The whole system

is sick with money

and no small percentage of the time they are not more than 80%
sure of diagnoses

Pushing pills on you that might be right, and might be wrong

[tomm2thumbs]

3. Sad when doctors are shocked to hear 'I'm not on any medication'

'What? You aren't taking anything?? Nothing at all??!'

_____

'An apple a day...' came about for a reason.

[JudyM]

4. "payments to entertain doctors" should be an unethical conflict of interest

... if it's more than lunch. As with our financial investments, our investment in our health/health care should be handled with transparency and good faith unencumbered by favors implicitly owed etc. That decisionmaking research is so well established that state medical regulating bodies should incorporate its lessons.

Plus we are entrusting a key, valuable asset to people who are commonly educated and swayed by the detail men/women who are no more than sales people.

Sorry to those who are in pharmaceutical sales, but doctors should be reading journals to learn, not sitting at your feet.

[MisterP]

5. "we need to get back to the time when science was RESPECTED in America

and this sort of news report wouldn't happen"

[olddots]

6. one thing we still manufacture in America is medical ailments

both mental and physical .