Like it or not, Obamacare forces drug company disclosure

President Barack Obama is poised to do what Nevada legislators wouldn't -- disclose the money and other benefits that flow generously from drug manufacturers to doctors in a myriad of ways.

Scornfully call it Obamacare if you like, but it's a provision in the health care law that is long overdue.

When it comes to drug companies paying for trips for doctors or paying them hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, you should want to know about it.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have taken the lead in writing about potential conflicts of interest between doctors and medical manufacturers. Although philosophically on opposite sides, both newspapers have raised questions in chilling stories about doctors taking money from drug and device manufacturers.

The Times' reported that some doctors practice medicine differently if they take money and are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways.

In the regulations being finalized, executives at the top would be responsible for the accuracy for that disclosure. The information would be on a searchable website so the public can check it out. About 1,100 companies would have to file reports.

Every transaction may not be dubious, but when more than one out of four doctors are paid for consulting, lectures or enrolling patients in clinical trials, you deserve to know if your doctor might have a financial interest in a particular company.

Assemblyman Marcus Conklin, D-Las Vegas, introduced consumer protection bills in 2005 and 2007 to try to get pharmaceutical companies to disclose ties in Nevada. The first bill was killed; the second was substantially weakened. The Nevada Board of Pharmacy has a list of companies on its website, but it doesn't reveal payments or names of doctors, so it's essentially useless.

Conklin said the national effort may be a better solution than a state-by-state effort. "Most companies are large national or international companies, and consolidating that information makes it easier for them to report."

AARP supported the idea at both the national level and in Nevada.

"We advocated for transparency at the state level but were defeated, and the state Legislature has not taken up this issue again," AARP Nevada's Deborah Moore said.

A handful of other states require disclosure, but the laws aren't consistent and the reports aren't easy to search.

The feds are going to do the job individual states haven't done, and provide some consistency to boot. A national reporting system will benefit consumers more than a feeble state-by-state effort.

By putting the responsibility for accurate reports on the backs of drug executives, it might eliminate the "forgetfulness" of some researchers, like the three child psychiatrists who failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees, or the psychiatrist who "forgot" to report $1.2 million in consulting fees, even though their states required disclosure.

Some drug manufacturers have stepped up and disclosed voluntarily. Hooray for them. Eli Lilly started disclosing some information and so has Merck, and they're not the only ones. But they're not disclosing in one searchable database, so specific information about your doctors is harder to find. But let's give them points anyway.

You should be able to find out if your doctors have a financial relationship with the drug or device being recommended for you. Then you can decide whether something smells rotten or is no big deal.

Frankly, I couldn't care less if a drug rep brings lunch to a medical office or takes a doctor to dinner to pitch a product.

But I'd have to wonder if a $100,000 lecture fee from a particular manufacturer influenced the prescription my doctor handed me.

But then, I usually get generic.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0275. She also blogs at
lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.