A new study by Conflixis confirms what healthcare consumers have long suspected: when Big Pharma pays doctors, prescribing behavior changes.
Politico reports: “Health care providers who accepted drug manufacturer payments in the form of consulting fees, free meals, industry-funded continuing-education events and other perks, prescribed those companies’ medications at dramatically higher rates than their non-compensated colleagues.”
Translation: the more money a doctor takes, the more likely they are to prescribe that company’s drug.
One striking example is Ozempic. The study found providers who received payments from Novo Nordisk, Ozempic’s maker, prescribed the drug 2.7 times more often than doctors without ties to the company—a $3.7 billion difference.
This is not new. ProPublica has shown that doctors paid by drugmakers prescribe those drugs more heavily. The National Institutes of Health has linked payments to higher prescribing costs, more branded drug use, and overall increased prescribing.
The issue goes beyond cost. Patient outcomes also suffer. The Conflixis report found that “states with higher rates of prescriptions linked to industry payments tended to have lower healthcare-quality scores,” while states that restrict payments saw better results.
North Carolina may be headed in the wrong direction. Some lawmakers are pushing legislation that would weaken the very tools insurers use to check payment-driven overprescribing.
As Harvard Medical School’s Aaron Kesselheim told ProPublica: “The association is consistent across the different types of payments. It’s also consistent across numerous drug specialties and drug types, across multiple different fields of medicine. And for small and large payments. It’s a remarkably durable effect. No specialty is immune from this phenomenon.”
The evidence is overwhelming. Lawmakers should strengthen, not dismantle, safeguards that protect patients and consumers from costly, profit-driven prescribing.
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