Pharma Gives Vermont Docs Lots Of Money
13 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 27th, 2007 // 8:11 am
That’s the word from the state’s attorney general, Bill Sorrell, who has just released his fourth report on pharma marketing disclosures filed by drugmakers. From July 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006, 81 drugmakers spent $2.25 million on fees, travel expenses and other payments to Vermont docs - primarily psychiatrists - hospitals, universities and others for marketing. This is a 2.3 increase from the previous 12-month period, and most was in the form of cash or checks.
“For the fourth year in a row, our analysis shows that there is a great deal of money being spent in our small state on marketing pharmaceutical products,†says Sorrell. “Right now we are the only state that has obtained and analyzed these expenditures by pharmaceutical companies. Other states are following our lead and have enacted similar laws, but our office is the only one in the country that prepares such a detailed analysis of the reported expenditures.â€
The top five spenders are: Lilly, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, Novartis, and Forest Labs. Togther, they spent nearly 60 percent of the total reported expenditures. Docs and other prescribers received 81 percent of the total payments and benefits, and all health care professionals received 88 percent of the total. What do they have in common? Meds prescribed by psychiatrists.
The top 100 recipients received a total of $1.5 million, or 69 percent of the total payments. Of those recipients, psychiatrists were the largest beneficiaries of gifts. Eleven shrinks received a total of $502,612.02, or about 22.4 percent of the total. The average payment to psychiatrists was $45,692, representing an increase of 119 percent over the average payment to the 14 psychiatrists in the top 100 recipient group in the previous reporting period. They received an average payment of $20,835.40.
The primary purpose for payments totaling $2,247,769.17:
Speaker Fees - $1,135,255.44, or 50.5 percent;
Education - $585,661.46, or 26.1 percent;
Marketing - $372,253.30, or 16.6 percent;
Consulting - $109,401.72, or 4.9 percent;
Other - $45,197.25, or 2 percent.
You can read more here.
Update: This afternoon, PhRMA’s Ken Johnson issued a statement decrying Vermont and Minnesota for their laws requiring drugmakers disclose payments to docs.
“Arming physicians with essential information about the medicines they prescribe undoubtedly benefits patients and advances healthcare in the United States,” he says. “The laws in states such as Vermont, however, disarm doctors by inhibiting access to critical scientific information about the benefits and risks of treatment options that help patients win their battle against disease.”
Lisa Van Syckel
Ed,
Is Dr. Fassler on that list?….Curious to know if he is being payed to distort the safety and efficacy information regarding psychotropic drugs in children and adolescents.He never disclosed who payed his way to the FDA Med Guide Hearing two weeks ago!!!…….
Art
I think Vermont is opening our collective eyes. We should take a hard look at this gross financial anatomy and not just glean the lurid headlines.
But there is more to do and it is much more critical to patient care.
The Vermont AG Billy Sorrell should also examine what the NY Times uncovered two weeks ago,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/business/12cancerpay.html?ex=1183089600&en=f85ad5d1f5cf2f22&ei=5070
“Some physicians say that cancer doctors responded to Medicare’s change by performing additional treatments that got them the best reimbursements, whether or not the treatments benefited patients.â€
“There’s pretty good evidence at this point,†said Dr. Richard Deyo, professor of medicine at the University of Washington and an expert on health care spending, “that there are plenty of patients for whom there’s little hope, who are terminally ill, whom chemotherapy is not going to help, who get chemotherapy.â€
Now the question is this: Did pharma brain wash the physicians into doing this with a dinner or a speakers fee? Or did physicians do it so they can make more money?
It is hard to imagine a physicians who says to you my day rate for teaching is $2,500 not $500 is driven by a desire to teach evidence based knowledge to his peers, NOT.
What is worse? A physician who eats a free meal or one who gives your elderly grandmother unnecessary, painful, debilitating chemo? Just think of kissing grandma who now has a raging case of stomatitis thanks to good old Dr. Pure.
interesting
Lisa & Art, if you have not seen it, look at post “Paid to prescribe…” and see what a “real” doctor who switched to big pharma for (guess) big money had to say. Apology on behalf of pharma and docs. According to him everything is above board and in compliance with the regulations. No one breaks them. Why did all those big companies get fined by DOJ? What an injustice.
Laurie
” disarm doctors by inhibiting access to critical scientific information about the benefits and risks of treatment options that help patients win their battle against disease.â€
So Pharma is saying that doctors will only learn about drugs IF they are PAID to do so??? If that’s the case, then this problem is a whole lot more complicated that we thought. I believe docs have a PDR that tells them what they need to know, without the dinner, pens, trips, and “speaking fees”. That is an insulting statement to doctors.
interesting
Reality: when the doctors do not get paid to lear about the pharma products, drugs, they learn the real truth about the drugs. This can be done by simply reading the (new) drug product monograph or an objective scientific study re the drug. This, big pharma does not like. Why? Simple, for the complete truth about drugs is too much of info for it includes everything, the good, the bad and the ugly about the drugs. They all have it and the docs should know it all when Rxing.
When doctors do get paid to learn about drugs, they are paid by pharma to learn what pharm wants them to learn, nothing more. That means the good, the good and the good. The bad and ugly if covered is done only superficially..”side effects? not many only slight headache, don’t worry doc”.
Just attend a company sponsored and paid for dinner CME where the company sponsored and paid for specialists does the talk. You’ll see what we mean.
Cyndi
I always find it interesting to hear people demonize the pharamceutical industry in between bites of their Big Macs and puffs on their Marlboro’s. We are a society that has lost personal responsibility for our own actions. Many of the diseases that the pharma industry treats could be eliminated by people taking more responsibility for their own health. Although there are certainly areas where the pharma industry could improve its image, the industry has saved many lives and reduced the overall costs of healthcare by reducing or eliminating more costly procedures. By the way, pharmaceutical costs only account for 10% of our overall healthcare costs. Not a bad ROI for what they provide.
Jeannie
I agree with Cyndi that Americans need to take individual responsibility for their own health. Instead of blaming the pharmaceutical industry, people need to understand the how the healthcare industry works. Because of wide spread managed care, physicians are under pressure to see high volume of patients in order to make the kind of money that they used to. Thus, they don’t have the financial incentive to spend time learning about advancements in drug therapies. Pharmaceutical companies therefore must find ways to disseminate information to physicians, one of which may be to provide some kind of “payment” or incentive. Now, pharmceutical companies are businesses and of course they would be biased to tout the benefits of their products as opposed to the negatives. This is where regulators such as the FDA come in to keep the pharmaceutical company practices ethical. Most people I know who work in the pharma industry are honest and smart people whose purpose in life is to discover drug that help people live healthy lives. We all gain from the scientific research that pharmaceutical companies conduct. If its wasn’t for pharmacuetical companies’ scientific research, we wouldn’t have even basic anti-biotics such as penicillin, or drugs that lower cholesterol which in turn lower the number of heart attaches, or drugs that now keep HIV-infected patients alive for at least 20-years whereas in the 1980’s HIV was the kiss of death, or drugs that fight breast cancer, or drugs that help couples enjoy sex, or drugs that prevent men from getting prostate cancer. The list goes on and on. Instead of point the finger at pharma, people should take a hard look at themselves and say, what can I do to improve my own health so that I won’t have to rely on drugs to keep me alive in my old age?
Lisa Van Syckel
Hi Girls,or Guys
Psychiatrists are prescibing antidepressants and antipsychotic medications to infants and toddlers at an alarming rate.
How do we justify this?…
Diabetics and HIV Patients need their medications to survive.
Infants and Toddlers can “survive” without the “Risperdal” and its life threatening side effects!…….
The prescribing of Antipsychotics has increased more than 175% in children!…This could not have happened without aggressive marketing, and a Physician’s conflict of interest.
Cyndi
The final blame needs to be placed on the parents of these children. It is their responsibility to advocate for what is safe and appropriate for their children. Common sense would suggest that you do not give amphetamines to children. Although there may be some valuable uses it clearly is a class of drugs that is over prescribed
Lisa Van Syckel
Parental Responsibility!!!……Please…….
Are you saying that GSK shouldnt take responsibility for promoting Paxil for children,knowing full well that their drug can maime or kill a child!!……
Information that was deliberately withheld from FDA and the Public….
What about those Physicians an Clinical Investigators who still tout the safety and efficay of antidepressants,knowing that these drugs are not FDA approved,and carry a Black Box warning.And choose to withhold vital information from parents,lets question their ETHICS!!
I was Gullable,not irresponsible!!! I can assure you, that wont happen again…
Melody
Lisa–
Thanks for your comments. Pharma advocates ALWAYS seek to shift the blame to the “consumer”–not the drug, not the industry, and not the doctor who is, after all, the final arbiter for getting pharma drugs into consumer bodies.
Most parents today, I would imagine, can’t find the time to read the local newspaper. Very few, I would guess, subscribe to medical journals/newsletters that offer a total picture. Instead, we place a historic reliance on doctors, who supposedly base their opinions on documented studies, filtered through their well-educated, highly-trained analytical brains, and governed by their oath to Hippocrates.
Both pharma and doctors supposedly operate under a Code of Ethics and advocate for self-policing. Those efforts (at self-policing) are dismal, to say the very least.
Lisa Van Syckel
Bravo,….well stated!!……
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