Doctors have long disputed the accusation that the payments they receive from pharmaceutical companies have any relationship to how they prescribe drugs.
There's been little evidence to settle the matter, until now.
A ProPublica analysis has found that doctors who receive payments from the medical industry do indeed prescribe drugs differently on average than their colleagues who don't. And the more money they receive, the more brand-name medications they tend to prescribe.
We matched records on payments from pharmaceutical and medical device makers in 2014 with corresponding data on doctors' medication choices in Medicare's prescription drug program.
Doctors who got money from drug and device makers prescribed a higher percentage of brand-name drugs overall than doctors who didn't, our analysis showed. Even those who simply got meals from companies prescribed more brand-name drugs, on average.
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5 comments:
Isn't that technically a kick-back?!
Doctors only get paid by Pharmaceutical companies for providing a service, typically a lecture that involves the company's drug. They don't get paid for prescribing medication. If the physician believes in the medication he is more likely to prescribe the medication.
This should be illegal.
What should be illegal? A medical professional educating his fellow colleagues on a disease process and its treatment? A physician providing an educational service for compensation? Yeh, you are right, that should be illegal.
The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me.
I thought everyone already knew this ..... guess not.
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