Newshoggers Archive: HCR -- PHYSICIAN PAYMENT SUNSHINE ACT

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Thursday, February 2, 2012

HCR -- PHYSICIAN PAYMENT SUNSHINE ACT

By John Ballard

Another feature of PPACA is kicking in.

Imagine yourself in front of your computer, looking up information about a drug prescribed by your doctor. Your Internet search tells you that there is a cheaper, maybe even a generic version available, but you have just paid top dollar for the brand name drug. You also learn that another treatment may be safer than the prescription you just filled. Now imagine you discover that your doctor gets paid by the manufacturer to promote the drug to other doctors.

There are various words for this sort of financial transaction, when, say, a radio disk jockey is paid by a recording studio to play a song or a broker is paid to tout a stock � both of which, by the way, are illegal. In medicine it�s called a financial conflict of interest, although �pharmapayola� is in some ways more accurate. It�s perfectly legal, and it�s rampant. In a survey published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2010, 28% of physicians reported that they received some kind of payment from a drug company to serve on a speaker�s board, as a consultant, or on an advisory board. Other bennies handed out by companies included free drug samples, tickets to sporting events, meals at five-star restaurants and all-expenses paid trips to medical meetings in nice locales.

Yes, I know. You are shocked that such a thing has been happening.

Here's a link where you can check up on a doctor.