Is your doctor’s name on the long list of drug company beneficiaries?

For years the drug companies kept it all a deep, dark secret.

It would take a lawsuit before we learned about cash payments, lavish dinners and expensive trips handed out to doctors who promoted and prescribed their meds.

Like the time Bristol-Myers Squibb paid for docs to get basketball tips from the Los Angeles Lakers… or when Pfizer sent 5,000 MDs to the Caribbean for massages and golf.

But a new government program has forced the drug companies to disclose all the doctors around the country they’ve been keeping on the payroll. And the problem is worse than we thought.

Turns out more than 606,000 physicians received billions of dollars in compensation from Big Pharma in 2014.

Some, almost every single day.

Good day sunshineIt may be the only sensible thing to come out of Obamacare — the Open Payments program, also known as the Sunshine Act.

The Sunshine Act requires drug companies and device makers to disclose exactly which doctors they’re paying to promote their meds — and how much these docs are making.

And while there are plenty of good doctors who never take a dime from Big Pharma, others are having fits over the disclosure. They’re even lining up in droves to support the 21st Century Cures Act… a bill I’ve told you about before… that would kill much of the Sunshine Act forever.

And who could blame them? Because with the 2014 payments info just released, there are plenty of doctors — and drug companies — with a lot of explaining to do.

For example, Dr. John Fritz, who practices family medicine in New Jersey, received nearly a quarter of a million dollars from drug companies like AstraZeneca, Sanofi, and Takeda in 2014. He was also indicted this year for allegedly accepting $500,000 in kickbacks from a medical imaging company.

And for some docs, pocketing Big Pharma cash is practically a full-time job.

Dr. Ana Stankovic of Parkland Medical Center in New Hampshire received drug company dollars for 242 days in 2014 — almost every workday of the year.

She was paid for food, travel, consulting and speaking on behalf of drugs ranging from Farxiga (for diabetes) to Myrbetriq (for overactive bladder) to Oxycontin (a highly addictive, narcotic pain drug) to Prevnar 13, a vaccine given to toddlers.

In fact, more than 14,600 doctors received payments on at least 100 days in 2014.

While Dr. Stankovic first refused comment when reporters questioned her side income, she later claimed that she’s “very passionate about clinical research and up-to-date medical information.”

I’d say that’s passion, all right!

If you’re wondering what the total payouts are, hold on to your hat, because it’s a pretty shocking figure — $6.5 billion. That covers consulting fees, licensing payments, food and travel, and “miscellaneous entertainment” that included tours of Alcatraz and airport massages.

Of course, Big Pharma will tell you that with all the new drugs they’re bringing to market, it’s important to keep docs educated (and apparently well relaxed). And that all costs money.

But when I checked Pfizer’s records, I found they paid $447,000 to Dr. John Diliberti — a pediatric geneticist from Illinois — for consulting fees associated with the dangerous arthritis drug Celebrex.

And that’s been on the market for 14 years!

Of course, the real outrage is that if these meds really worked, Big Pharma wouldn’t have to pay doctors to promote them. These wonder pills would sell themselves.

And the fact that the drug companies are afraid to stop these payouts should tell you everything you need to know about prescription medicine.

Now, if there’s any upside to this, it’s that having your name linked to the likes of Pfizer, Merck and Abbott doesn’t do a lot for your reputation as a doctor.

So many doctors are saying that they would rather give up the perks than have to explain away that trip to Jamaica or the expensive dinner at the priciest restaurant in town.

If you want to check for your doctor’s name at the “Dollars for Docs” website — which now includes the complete, updated 2014 information — click here.

Sources:
“U.S. doctors, hospitals reap $6.5 billion from drug and device makers: report” Bill Berkrot, June 30, 2015, Reuters, reuters.com

“Drug and medical-device makers paid $6.49 billion to doctors, hospitals in 2014” Peter Loftus and Joseph Walker, June 30, 2015, The Wall Street Journal, wsj.com

“A pharma payment a day keeps docs’ finances okay” Charles Ornstein and Ryann Grochowski Jones, July 1, 2015, ProPublica, propublica.org