Why We Allow Big Pharma to Rip Us Off. By Robert Reich

[Valley Oak]

This article was published by The Huffington Post, 10.6.14

Why We Allow Big Pharma to Rip Us Off

Robert Reich
Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley; author of 'Beyond Outrage.'

According to a new federal database put online last week, pharmaceutical companies and device makers paid doctors some $380 million in speaking and consulting fees over a five-month period in 2013.

Some doctors received over half a million dollars each, and others got millions of dollars in royalties from products they helped develop.

Doctors claim these payments have no effect on what they prescribe. But why would drug companies shell out all this money if it didn't provide them a healthy return on their investment?

America spends a fortune on drugs, more per person than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations.

Of the estimated $2.7 trillion America spends annually on health care, drugs account for 10 percent of the total.

Government pays some of this tab through Medicare, Medicaid, and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. But we pick up the tab indirectly through our taxes.

We pay the rest of it directly, through higher co-payments, deductibles, and premiums.

Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.

Another technique is called "product hopping" -- making small and insignificant changes in a drug whose patent is about to expire, so it's technically new.

For example, last February, before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer's...

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Below: A clip from Robert Reich's movie, "INEQUALITY FOR ALL:"