Dollars for Doctors : How Industry Money Reaches Physicians

This is an excellent website. If you want to see if your doctor is receiving money from drug companies to push their products, you can search this website. Until three years ago, the payments drug companies made to our health care workers and physicians were trade secrets. As pressure from lawmakers, or as a condition of settling whistle-blower lawsuits, several companies started reporting what they were paying out. 

This site makes it easy to see why we pay such a ridiculous amount for prescription drugs and why certain doctors push certain drugs, even when they know the side effects. It appears that some doctors are “giving up” this lucrative side business for fear that their patients might think that their “opinions” might be  biased. In addition to being paid for speaking, their expenses for travel, meals, “research” and consulting were paid for as well!!   

Company	2010 Speaker Payments	2010 U.S. Sales
Lilly	$61,477,547	$14.3 billion
GlaxoSmithKline	$52,755,793	$13.6 billion
Pfizer	$34,382,574	$26.2 billion
AstraZeneca	$31,647,101	$18.3 billion
Merck	$20,365,446	$18.8 billion
Johnson & Johnson	$11,712,900	$12.9 billion
Cephalon	$4,241,080	$2.1 billion
ViiV Healthcare	$3,975,102	Unavailable

Dollars for Docs

Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors and other health professionals for promoting their drugs. But 12 companies have begun publicizing the information, some because of legal settlements. ProPublica pulled their disclosures into a database so patients can search for their doctor. Accepting payments isn’t necessarily wrong, but it can raise ethical issues.

Click the above link to find your doctor….

Related articles

• Case Study: Pharma & Facebook (medmeme.com)
• GlaxoSmithKline Agrees to Pay $3 Billion in Fraud Settlement (nytimes.com)
• Big Pharma News: GlaxoSmithKline Found Guilty of Drug Fraud Settlement (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
• Dr. Drew Allegedly Paid $275000 To Illegally Promote GlaxoSmithKline Drugs – Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com)
• What will it take for Pharmaceutical Companies to Stop Offering Doctors Illegal Inducements to Prescribe Dangerous and Expensive Drugs – and for Doctors to Stop Accepting Them? (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Drug Company Employee: Don’t Believe Our Studies (newser.com)
• Medical / pharmaceutical chicanery (biosil.wordpress.com)
• Report: J&J will pay $2.2B in Risperdal settlement (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Report: J&J will pay $2.2B in Risperdal settlement (seattlepi.com)
• Sunshine Falls on Dr. Drew: A CNN Host Admits Taking $275,000 in Kickbacks From GlaxoSmithKline (theatlantic.com)
• Profiles of Drug Companies “Doing it Right”: AstraZeneca (medmeme.com)
• Alternative media blows the lid on Big Pharma’s massive bribery network (naturalremediesblog.net)
• AstraZeneca tries new tack in brain research – Reuters (reuters.com)
• Johnson & Johnson: Why Value Investors Should be Looking (valuewalk.com)
• BTG Raises Guidance on Strong Start (dailyfinance.com)
• The Price of Togetherness (pharmaceuticalintelligence.com)
• Drug firms agree to declare doctor payments (smh.com.au)
• Drug Companies Reduce Payments to Doctors (gloucestercitynews.net)
• White House Made Deal With Big Pharma on Health Bill (newser.com)
• Who’s Afraid of Sunshine Laws? (chronicle.com)
• Chatting With the Reporters Behind Dollars for Docs (propublica.org)
• Medicine mafia style (theaveragejoenewsblogg.com)