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Sunday, July 12th, 2015

A Pharma Payment A Day Keeps Docs’ Finances Okay

Author:     Charles Ornstein and Ryann Grochowski Jones
Source:     Pro Publica
Publication Date:     July 1, 2015, 4:09 p.m.
 Link: A Pharma Payment A Day Keeps Docs’ Finances Okay
Stephan:   Obamacare was a first step to universal healthcare but it is fatally flawed, and is so by design. As this report spells out we still do not have true healthcare in the United States because  the purpose of the system remains profit not wellness. The best we can muster is a more efficient Illness Profit System. It is still grossly inferior to the true universal healthcare in the rest of the developed world, and it remains the most costly system in the world.

dollarshcFew days went by last year when New Hampshire nephrologist Ana Stankovic didn’t receive a payment from a drug company.

All told, 29 different pharmaceutical companies paid her $594,363 in 2014, mostly for promotional speaking and consulting, but also for travel expenses and meals, according to data released Tuesday detailing payments by drug and device companies to U.S. doctors and teaching hospitals. (You can search for your doctor on ProPublica’s updated Dollars for Docs interactive database.)

Stankovic’s earnings were certainly high, ranking her about 250th among 606,000 doctors who received payments nationwide last year. What was more remarkable, though, was that she received payments on 242 different days — nearly every workday of last year.

Reached by telephone Tuesday, Stankovic declined to comment. On her LinkedIn page, Stankovic lists herself as vice chief of staff at Parkland Medical Center HCA Inc. in Derry, New Hampshire, and as medical director of peritoneal dialysis at DaVita Inc., also in Derry.

That doctors receive big money from the pharmaceutical industry is no surprise. The new data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services […]

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