The billions of dollars that pharma pays to healthcare providers is finally getting national attention

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/generalprofessionalissues/109400?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2024-03-28&eun=g2225995d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Evening%202024-03-28&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition

In a JAMA article released on March 28th, the dirty corruption of big pharma paying billions of dollars to healthcare providers is finally getting its day in the spotlight. This has been going on for YEARS. We have discussed it a few times on here. I shared with all of you my sunshine law data a couple months ago.

“More than $12 billion in payments were made from industry to physicians from 2013 to 2022, an analysis of payment data showed.

Over this time period, 85,087,744 payments with a total value of $12.13 billion were made by industry to 826,313 physicians, with 93.8% of these payments associated with one or more marketed medical products, reported Andrew Foy, MD, of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the JAMA report”.

Of course the JAMA article is subscribe and pay only, and I am not contributing to the funding of them, so borrowing the information that Chief Nerd shared on X this morning when the article news broke.

“The 3 drugs associated with the most payments were Xarelto ($176.34 million), Eliquis ($102.62 million), and Humira ($100.17 million). The 3 medical devices associated with the most payments were the da Vinci Surgical System ($307.52 million), Mako SmartRobotics ($50.13 million), and CoreValve Evolut ($44.79 million).”

Notice that there are a few big names. Eliquis? Humira? Most people have heard of those. Botox? In the psych world, we have Vraylar, Latuda, and Abilify on the wall of shame. Important to note that Abilify went generic in 2015, so their ranking on there was just from 2 years of pharma shilling to corrupt healthcare providers! Latuda went generic in 2022. Vraylar is still brand only so they are rolling out the big bucks to providers and speakers and I would expect if you re-ran these numbers in a few years, their drug would be higher up the list. Their company also owns Humira so they have 2 on the list of “pimp my drug”. Ozempic also came in on the list, with the massive money they have paid to weight loss clinics. They will climb higher on a recount as the years go by.

This shows the total numbers by specialty. $1.3 BILLION was paid to psychiatry and neurology. That makes me sick. We have been down the road of the dangers of some psych meds and the SSRI discussion, so seeing how much money big pharma dumps into psych and neurology to make sure they prescribe those meds is heartbreaking for patients and the population.

Also note that the average payment to each provider in ONCOLOGY was $1153 per occurrence. That is a lot of money. That isn’t just a Subway sandwich and cookie. That was much much more. Speaking fees, fancy speaker dinners, all of it.

Pharma owns the entire healthcare industry, with a little help from their insurance buddies across the street.