Sunshine Briefing Features Calls for Expansion of Reporting Requirements and An End To Drug Reps and Samples

The National Coalition on Healthcare recently held a discussion on the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. The discussion featured insight from Rodney Whitlock, who currently works for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) as the Health Director of the Senate Finance Committee. Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor at Georgetown and the director of Pharmed-Out, Allan Coukell, the senior director of the Pew Charitable Trust, and Dr. William Jordan, President-Elect of the National Physicians Alliance provided their views on the Sunshine Act and the pharmaceutical industry as well. Whitlock started things off by noting that Senator Grassley believes that generally “more information available to the public is in the public interest.” He reiterated, however, that the Sunshine Act approaches financial transactions between companies and doctors from a transparency perspective, rather than an "absolutist approach" of condemning these interactions, or suggesting they are illegal. That is an important distinction, and one Whitlock repeated throughout the discussion in order to draw a line between Senator Grassley’s position and the opinions of the other panel members. Grassley’s ultimate goal, stated Whitlock, is for both patients and doctors to be comfortable looking at the Open Payments data and having an open discussion. He notes that while the Sunshine Act was only meant to get the data out there, now it is up to the research community to use the information to inform public ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs