Article#:3
Title of newspaper: North county times
Title of article: Doctors Dine on drug comapnies dime
Web Adress: http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/health-care-doctors-dine-on-drug-companies-dime/article_e7fce54d-009e-5e2c-903d-4a8f4fefc836.html
When pharmaceutical companies first started revealing their financial relationships with physicians, almost all of the listed doctors did actual work for them ---- delivering promotional talks, consulting on marketing or new products and conducting research.
But as the firms' reports have become more detailed, hundreds of thousands of doctors are being listed merely for eating lunch or dinner on the company's dime.
ProPublica's initial Dollars for Docs database, released last October, included about 30,000 payment records. The most recent update includes more than half a million.
Under federal law, all drug and medical device firms will have to publicly report all payments to physicians, including food, beginning in 2013.
For some doctors, the meals don't appear modest. At least 20 doctors, including Emert, received meals worth $2,000 or more from Pfizer between July 2009 and March of this year. None served as a speaker, consultant or researcher.
Six doctor, most in New York City, received more than $1,000 in meals from Eli Lilly and Co. in the first quarter of this year and performed no services for the company, records show.
Lilly spokesman J. Scott MacGregor said in an email that the spending reflects a mix of in-office business meals and meals at educational events.
"While each individual meal was within Lilly meal limits, we have determined we need to improve awareness among our employees around the standard of occasional meals," he said.
For patients, seeing that their physician received company-paid meals probably wouldn't carry much weight, said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and an advocate for full disclosure of drug-company payments to doctors.
They were given a grant of $1,000 in meals from eli lilly and Co. in the first quater of the year and performed no services for the company, or records show.
Lilly spokesman J. Scott MacGregor said in an email that the spending reflects a mix of in-office business meals and meals at educational events.
"While each individual meal was within Lilly meal limits, we have determined we need to improve awareness among our employees around the standard of occasional meals," he said.
For patients, seeing that their physician received company-paid meals probably wouldn't carry much weight, said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and an advocate for full disclosure of drug-company payments to doctors.
They were given a grant of $1,000 in meals from eli lilly and Co. in the first quater of the year and performed no services for the company, or records show.
"It's much more likely to have a kind of 'Tell-Tale Heart' effect on the physicians," said Loewenstein, whose research has shown that payments and gifts influence actions. "A doctor is very likely to say it's not worth it to take a $15 meal because it's going to get listed on the website."
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