HUFFINGTON POST: U.S. doctors and teaching hospitals received $3.5 billion from pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers in the last five months of 2013, according to the most extensive data trove on such payments ever made public.
The payments, disclosed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday, include consulting and speaking fees, travel, meals, entertainment and research grants. The names of the recipients of about 40 percent of the payments reported by companies were withheld because CMS had concerns about data inconsistencies…
The companies were required by President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare reform law to disclose to the federal government by March all payments of $10 or more to doctors, dentists and other practitioners, as well as to teaching hospitals, for August to December 2013. Even payments that physicians have requested be sent to a charity must be reported… (more)
EDITOR: So how much of the medicine being prescribed is the best choice or really necessary? Are the elderly being used as ‘pin cushions’?
