“They put me on…” –
Dec. 20, 2019 –
Key Takeaways
We studied the 50 most-prescribed brand-name drugs in Medicare for which drugmakers had made payments to doctors in 2016. The drugs include treatments for diabetes, asthma, high cholesterol, hypertension, glaucoma and more. Among our findings:
Of those 50 drugs, 38 cost more than $1,000 per year.
For 32, at least 10% of doctors prescribing the drug received payments tied to the drug from the company that made it.
For 46 of the drugs in 2016, doctors who received payments for the drug prescribed more of it compared with doctors who did not.
On average, doctors who received payments prescribed 58% more of that drug than doctors who did not. … On average, across all drugs, providers who received payments specifically tied to a drug prescribed it 58% more than providers who did not receive payments.
