financial relationships

With health care reform continuing as a hot topic in the US, more discussions of issues of interest to Health Care Renewal are appearing.

We previously posted about a discussion of how physicians are paid by the US Medicare physician by a prominent expert.

We noted that his discussion seemed to avoid critical issues, and thus may have failed to suggest changes that would address the real problems.

Various kinds of conflicts of interest affecting medical academics, practicing physicians, and diverse health care decision makers have frequently been topics of discussion on Health Care Renewal.

We previously discussed an article by Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee in Slate The article discussed a show broadcast on many US National Public Radio (NPR) stations which portrayed a rather benign view of the side-effects of anti-depressant medications.

Not revealed to listeners was that the show was partially funded by a company that manufacturers such medication, and all the participants in the show had some financial relationships with such companies.

On the Hooked: Ethics, Medicine and Pharma blog, Dr Howard Brody expanded his focus a bit to include medical device companies.

He posted about the ongoing investigations of orthopedic surgeons' financial relationships to the manufacturers of prosthetic joints.

On the PharmaGossip blog, "Jack Friday" posted his list of suggestions to the UK Royal College of Physicians working group on relationships among physicians and the pharmaceutical industry.