Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1986

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Reznick R.
Treasury targets perks by drug companies to doctors
HAARETZ.com ( Israel) 2005 Aug 7
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/609256.html

Keywords:
Israel Medical Association perks

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments: At last, we have a government which is prepared to derail the gravy-train by which the pharmaceutical industry supplies the medical profession with ‘obligation-free’ largesse. Often under the guise of ‘medical education’.
Note how the local Medical Association is opposed to the restrictions.

Full text:

Treasury targets perks by drug companies to doctors
By Ran Reznick

The Finance Ministry intends to put an end to the practice of the pharmaceutical industry offering perks to health care workers. The treasury, in the framework of the Health Insurance Law, plans to forbid all public hospital and HMO employees, most importantly physicians, from receiving gifts from manufacturers, importers or suppliers of drugs and medical equipment.

The treasury also said that it would not increase funding for the health services basket in the 2006 State Budget because of “budgetary limitations” and because since 1998, new technologies have been added to the basket at a cost of more than a billion shekels.

Health Minister Dan Naveh will oppose the bill.

The ban would include cash payments and the funding or subsidization of hotel stays, studies, conferences and trips abroad.

The intention is also to prevent any direct or indirect gifts to workers, including through health corporations (research funds), or professional associations in which the medical workers are members.

Under the proposal, a worker who receives a gift valued at NIS 300 or more would be required to pay an equivalent amount to the health fund or hospital where he works, which in turn would have to transfer it to the state, in compliance with the Civil Service Gifts Law.

The proposal is meant to stop the pervasive practice in hospitals and HMOs where drug and medical equipment companies promote their goods by funding conferences for doctors, nurses and pharmacists at luxury hotels here and abroad. This practice has gone on without any serious public supervision or transparency.

The ministry writes in its proposal, “The judicial, ethical and public deficiencies in promoting certain drugs through employees of public hospitals and health funds by means of providing them perks, is joined by additional failures like the fear that promoting drugs in this manner is not based on professional criteria of the doctor and does not necessarily meet the needs of the patient.” In the letter, the treasury writes, “This phenomenon significantly raises the cost of medical care, because in many cases, the cost of the new drug is much higher – up to four times as much – than the existing drug.”

Because there are currently no restrictions, many doctors receive funding for conferences for themselves as well as their spouses, without even requesting or receiving permission from their employer.

Minister of Health Dan Naveh opposes the new proposal, as does the Israel Medical Association, which until this clash has been able to stop similar bills from passing in the Knesset.