Time for Big Pharma to disclose its payments to doctors?

Why are there commercials for medications?????? if the doc thinks I need it, he will tell me!!!

The only people opposed to this plan would be the pharmacy companies and the crooked doctors who take money to prescribe their products. Those doctors, by the way, should be required to prominently post, in office waiting rooms, how much of these types of payments they receive and from which companies.

In the recording industry, it's called "payola" and it's illegal. Why should the drug industry be governed differently?

This greediness is well overdue. Why are the docs promoting a new med everytime you go for a check-up? And why are meds cheaper in Canada? Why are they pulling otc's off the shelves at pharmacies that work. They have replaced a lot of otc's with meds that don't work....Where is my mylanta? I hear they pulled it off the market because of alcohol content. I guess alot of folks have been drunk on it for as long as I can remember.

lobbying should be outlawed in our government....big-pharma shouldn't be allowed to court doctors either....simple math....which means its all about the money....

A small step in the right direction.

I would rather see how much money the politicians are getting.....Now with super pacs, we will never know.

Remove the lobbyists fees, doctor free-bees, advertising, outrageous bonuses, monopolistic practice then the price for drugs just may come down to an affordable level. But then you probably wouldn't need insurance but that's a no-no to the big insurance boyz so you can imagine nothing will ever be accomplished by the smoke screens that will be set up by the drug companies.

Considering the number of times that a 'fashionable' drug has been recommended by one of my doctors without consideration of how it might affect my health or whether it was even the most effective for my physiology, I think this is a good thing. I learned to question my doctors the hard way....I was prescribed a medication that contained a chemical I was allergic to. As the information was listed in my records, I have to conclude that making money was at the root of the problem. Not only that, he lied to me when I asked if there was anything I needed to know about the medication before I took it.

Thankfully, I had an observant pharmacist who caught it before filling the prescription. It's a sad statement on our medical care that someone has to double check what a doctor is doing.

Cant wait to see what kind of spin Fox news puts on this

This would seem to me to be a complete no-brainer. We outlawed payola by the music establishment, we created the freedom of information act, we require our politicians to report perks, etc., yet we question something so egregiously illegal as Big Pharma keeping their form of payola on the sly? Huh? FULL TRANSPARENCY is a MUST. We're talking about people's lives here! If they get away with this, it will be nothing less than criminal. I know that sounds over the top, but the way out "government" allows exceptions to the rule at every turn, I have zero faith in them. Integrity be damned, I guess!

I would go a bit farther in yet another direction to get to the bottom of the true cost of drugs. Require that the companies deduct all the funds taxpayers gave them to develop a drug from the cost of the drug prior to marking it up to as they say == cover the cost of development. Most of the drugs on the market were paid for by the taxpayer not the companies.

I don't care about free pens to doctors, I want to know what the pahrmaceutical companies are paying legislators and PACs.

Hmm, who to believe? Consumer advocates or Big Pharma reps who want to keep paying doctors to push their products? This is a tough one...

I wish another headline read, "Time for Big Corporations to disclose its payments to Congress".

While we're at it, I'd love to know how many referrals for tests and procedures my doctor has to make each month as part of his employment by our hospital/clinic big corporation. I know it happens because other doctors have told me so. And our pharmacist in our little town of 7500 says she personally catches on average 8-10 potentially dangerous interactions in drugs prescribed by the same physician. Every time I go to the Dr. they have the wrong meds listed for me even though I correct them every time.

good luck on this one

I'm alive because of big pharma and my doctors.

It is more then just Doctors and Drug companies, the inability of the Government Bureaucracy to detect or prevent fraud waste and abuse means that taxpayers pick up the tab for extra procedures and drugs that may not be necessary. The patient has no reason to care about the costs. $10,000 for a prostate exam? Does my insurance cover it? It does, ok then go for it....... But the real person taking it in the #$%$ is the tax payer if it is government funded, or the other insurance customers who pay for it in their growing rates.

How about we make Congress reveal what they use tax payer money for.