"loopholes allow drug companies to hide millions of dollars in payments and make it difficult to know who’s receiving them." MSNBC
According to a recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, laws in Minnesota and Vermont requiring puplic disclosure of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians do not actually provide access to such information. In Vermont, 61% of payments were not released to the public because pharmaceutical companies designated them as "trade secrets" and 75% of publicly disclosed payments were missing information necessary to identify the recipient.
Whatever information provided proved of limited quality once accessed, however the authors were able to conclude that substantial numbers of payments in excess of $100 or more were made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies. The following two books will provide additional insight: "The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us, and What to Do About It", by Marcia Angell, ISBN 0-375-50846-5, New York, NY, Random House, 2004 and "On the Take: How Medicine’s Complicity With Big Business Can Endanger Your Health", by Jerome Kassirer, ISBN 0-19-517684-7, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2004.
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