CNN recently found that pharmaceutical companies that make opioids give big money to doctors to boost the number of opioid prescriptions and recommend opioid-based painkillers.
According to CNN, a team of Harvard researchers found that drug companies gave U.S. doctors millions of dollars to recommend the drugs, counsel, and talk about opioids. Some doctors received more than $25,000 from 2014 to 2015.
Also doctors with many prescriptions had the highest payouts. It remained unclear if the money led to more drugs being prescribed or more prescription led to higher payouts given to doctors.
- Between 2014 and 2015, almost half of the nation’s doctors who took care of Medicare patients gave at least one opioid prescription.
- Around 25% of those doctors got money from opioid makers.
Researchers found that one medic was paid over $200,000 over three years by a company that produces a highly potent opioid – fentanyl. The drug is so addictive that it has killed thousands of people worldwide including the beloved pop singer Prince.
U.S. Doctors Received Millions from Drug Makers
The company that makes the painkiller is led by John Kapoor, who is an extremely wealthy businessman with no morals. Last fall, a court charged him with trading influences and giving doctors generous payouts to prescribe fentanyl to more patients.
The latest CNN report is in line with research from Boston University from 2016. That study revealed that more than 68,000 doctors received payouts from the drug industry which totaled $46 million. In other words, 1 in 12 medics received money from the Big Pharma to prescribe opioids over a period of 29 months.
Dislike they’re spending this cash and simply releasing it out into the ether,
lead author Michael Barnett said in an interview with CNN.
Barnett believes that drug companies wouldn’t have spent so much money if they hadn’t known that they would be repaid handsomely afterward.
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