Category Archives: Politics
Secret Payments to Doctors Will End in 2013
Earlier, I wrote about how doctors aren’t disclosing their financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Turns out that they soon will be: As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, drug, device and medical supply companies are required to list payments worth $10 or more to doctors in a public database that can [...]
Secret payments to doctors put patient lives at risk
A big part of what I do for a living is investigate the safety of drugs and medical devices. That means I spend time reading studies about the safety of a specific drug. One of the things I look at is the author of the study. If the author of the study discloses that he [...]
Even under Obama, politics trumps science at the FDA & USDA
Call me crazy, but it seems to me that political back-scratching shouldn’t determine whether or not consumers eat tainted meat or take defective drugs: Scientists and inspectors at the federal agencies responsible for food safety say they face political and corporate interference with their work, according to a survey released Monday by the Union of [...]
Will the FDA Finally Get Subpoena Power & Recall Authority?
Did you know that the FDA doesn’t have subpoena power? That’s the power to make a company hand over a document. Every single attorney in the U.S. can subpoena a document from a pharmaceutical company, but the FDA (which is supposed to regulate pharmaceuticals) doesn’t have that power. Citing a recent spike in pharmaceutical recalls, [...]
Enading Pay-to-Delay deals will save taxpayers billions of dollars… and may save some lives, too.
Pay-to-delay deals help no one and nothing outside of the bottom lines of a few big pharmaceutical companies. Here’s hoping they go away soon… FOR TOO LONG, pay-for-delay settlements have been an accepted part of the health-care landscape. In these deals, a brand-name drug manufacturer pays a generic competitor to delay its entry into the [...]
Bipartisan Push To Remove Avandia From The Market
I generally tend to support Democrats because they are usually more attentive to the needs of everyday Americans vs. those of the drug companies. One notable exception is that of Republican Chuck Grassley. He’s been a thorn in the side of many drug companies, so I’m not surprised that he’s so involved in the controversy [...]
Pay-To-Delay Drug Deals Dying Due To Democrats
You tell me if this sounds competitive: Major pharmaceutical company develops new drug. Minor pharmaceutical company wants to bring generic version on the market at a much lower price. Major pharmaceutical company pays minor pharmaceutical company not to release the drug. In the eyes of some pharmaceutical industries, and some Republicans, that is a competitive [...]
