Let the sun shine in contd.

What the Sunshine Act Means for Health Care Transparency Part of the Afordable Care Act was designed to allow anyone to look up which doctors are getting how much from which companies. Curious whether a prescription or medical device your doctor is recommending comes from a manufacturer who has been paying your doctor? Good news, then: The federal government has finally developed a plan for how the Physician Payments Sunshine Act will work. The Sunshine Act, made federal law as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, was designed to allow anyone -- patients, doctors, journal editors -- to look up which doctors are getting how much from which companies. Three weeks ago, in an open letter expressing frustration over lack of movement on the Sunshine Act, the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, and four colleagues reminded the White House that financial relationships with drug and device makers are well known to influence physicians' treatment choices and to drive up healthcare costs. Angell and her colleagues called on the Obama administration to "implement the Act without any further delay so that it can begin, as soon as possible, to rein in the undue and harmful influence of money on medicine." Why would a doctor resist having payments made public? I put that question to Ben Goldacre, physician and author, most recently, of Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. Goldacre responded, "I think they're ofte...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs