Following a portion of a blog post I wrote on Health Insurance Illuminated. You may want to read the full article.
Have you ever heard of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act? Most people haven’t but it is part of the Affordable Care Act. The Sunshine act requires medical product manufactures to disclose on a public website payments or gifts made to doctors in excess of $10 in value. A January 23, 2012 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal criticized this law based on it being a boondoggle for lawyers and accountants, patients not caring about such payments and most curious, on the basis that money needed to keep physicians informed and up to date on the latest medical developments will be diverted to comply with the law. Somehow the writer of the article, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, sees harm in criticizing a physician for “eating a corporate bagel” while receiving useful product information. In other words, these payments, gifts and yes a dozen bagels cannot possibly create any conflict of interest in his view.
Now that you are familiar with the situation, take a look at this from a February 3, 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal: Study: Hospitals Overpay for Devices
Hospitals long have struggled to control costs for implantable devices in part because physicians typically choose which product to use while hospitals, patients and insurers foot the bill, hospital executives say.
Because hospitals depend on doctors for patient referrals and revenue, they often bow to the demands of physicians who may prefer, for instance, a defibrillator made by a particular manufacturer to one from another, regardless of price.
The GAO report highlighted that problem, and said contracts between manufacturers and hospitals often forbid disclosure of prices even to doctors, making it harder to steer doctors to less expensive options. In some cases, the report said, hospitals bound by such contracts resorted to using color-coded stickers to help doctors distinguish between cheaper or more expensive devices on stock shelves.
So what do you think? Is the influence, gifts, including free bagels and much more given to doctors by equipment manufacturers, drug companies and others affecting the cost and perhaps quality of your health care? You bet your bippy such influence peddling is affecting the cost of health care. There is a big difference between educating and marketing and we all pay for that difference.
Related articles
- Study Finds Doctors Not Always Honest With Patients (dfw.cbslocal.com)
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