More conflicts…

We had previously written how a study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that “94 percent of more than 3,000 physicians surveyed reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry" which could be something as simple as receiving free pens to "receiving payments for consulting, giving lectures and even enrolling their patients in trials."

It turns out that payments to doctors is estimated to total hundreds of millions of dollars per year - and these payments have risen due to competition between drug makers - especially Amgen and Johnson & Johnson. In fact, The New York Times has uncovered (from documents given to the paper) that Amgen paid a group of six doctors in a medical practice $2.7 million for prescribing $9M worth of its drug for anemia patients last year. Imagine... the doctors were basically receiving almost 30% commission for the anemia drug they prescribed. As if this wasn't bad enough, the FDA released a report yesterday stating there was "no evidence indicated that the medicines either improved quality of life in patients or extended their survival, while several studies suggested that the drugs can shorten patients’ lives when used at high doses." To add further conflict, not only do these doctors gets payments from the pharma companies, but then they also receive reimbursements from Medicare – often at a price over what the doctor paid.

According to Amgen, these payments "were a normal commercial practice." Even though it's a "common" practice, does that mean this shouldn't be changed?

NO!

These payments should be deemed illegal – for the good of everyone in this country --- especially considering that doctors receive even higher payments if they agree to exclusively use the company's drug.

This needs to stop.