I'll Write You A Prescription For That

Minnesota has a law that requires drug companies to disclose payments they make to doctors.

From a NYTimes online article today about such payments, I offer you these tidbits:

From 1997 to 2005 drug companies paid in excess of 5,500 Minnesota doctors (20% of the doctors in Minnesota) more than $57 million. One of them a Dr. Grimm, was paid $798,000.00. He said the lectures he was paid to give were unbiased.

Some 250 Minnesota psychiatrists got $6.7 million.

A number of doctors said that lectures they were paid by drug companies to give to other doctors were "gentle marketing pitches." Former drug company sales reps said they hired doctors to make speeches to influence prescribing habits. "The vast majority of the time that we did any sort of paid relationship with a physician, they increased the use of our drug" said a former Bristol-Meyers-Squibb and Johnson & Johnson rep. "[I]t all comes down to ways to manipulate the doctors."

A 2004 government sponsored advisory panel recommended that more people should take cholesterol-lowering drugs. Eight of the nine members of the panel had financial ties to drug companies.

I don't think physicians purposely mis-prescribe because of drug company bribes. But I'm less sure about over-prescribing and prescribing a more expensive drug than I was before reading the article.