Uncovering the “trade secrets” of Vermont drug companies

When it comes to your health, you’d probably like to think that physicians meet with drug company representatives strictly to get information that will ensure patients get the most beneficial treatments. You’d like to think that pharmaceutical companies don’t ply doctors with gifts in an attempt to influence their prescription choices. And wouldn’t you like to think that the next time you find yourself at a doctor’s office, the prescription that he or she writes for you will be based solely on what is best for you?

Unfortunately, that may not be the case.

Public Citizen today released new findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showing that in Vermont, drug companies gave more than $4.9 million in payments to health care providers between July 2002 and July 2004 – far more than the $2.7 million that we uncovered and reported  in JAMA in March 2007.

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Federal officials literally in bed with big oil

Flickr photo/watchsmart

Charlie Savage of the New York Times reports today:

On one occasion in 2002, the report said, two of the officials who marketed taxpayers’ oil got so drunk at a daytime golfing event sponsored by Shell that they could not drive to their hotels and were put up in Shell-provided lodging. Two female employees “engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts,” the reports’ cover memo said, adding that “sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms’ length.”

On one occasion, the report said, the royalty-in-kind program allowed a Chevron representative who had won a bid to purchase some of the government’s oil to pay taxpayers a lower amount than his winning offer because he said he had made a mistake in his calculations. A report from Mr. Devaney’s office earlier this year found that the program had frequently allowed companies that purchased the oil and gas to revise their bids downward after they won contracts. It documented 118 such occasions that cost taxpayers about $4.4 million in all.

Outrage, anyone?

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