The Pharmaceutical Inspector who documents the extent of bribery in the health system

2023-12-19 14:15:05

The issue of bribery of doctors by numerous drug manufacturers goes back a long way.

I had the opportunity to document it in my book Laboratory of doctors. Journey inside medicine and the pharmaceutical industry (Península, 2011), 12 years ago.

I spent five years interviewing more than two dozen medical visitors who told me and provided documentation about that corrupt practice.

Hay brave doctors who during these years have been publishing on this matter: Doctors paid by the industry.

And now I read this Payments to healthcare professionals and organizations: the flea market of pharmaceutical multinationalswhose author is Ángel María Martín Fernández-GallardoPharmaceutical Inspector of the Health Service of Castilla-La Mancha (SESCAM).

This professional says that what the industry calls “transfers of value” (actually covert bribery), represents 667 million euros annually in Spain alone.

This inspector explains it very clearly:

They have turned these payments into a flea market attended annually by more than 100,000 professionals and more than 5,500 healthcare organizationswhich they supply with the scandalous prices they impose on medicines paid by the SNS [Servicio Nacional de Salud]in which they resell consciences and the same ones always win, merchants«.

Ángel María Martín Fernández-GallardoPharmaceutical Inspector.

This person maintains that under the concept of transfers of value, “pharmaceutical multinationals refer to payments made to professionals and health organizations derived from donations, training activities, scientific-professional meetings or provision of services and to R&D payments for their participation in clinical trials.

The healthcare press It goes further, going so far as to consider them as a contribution of the pharmaceutical industry to the National Health System, but nothing could be further from the truth.

If there is one thing that the analysis of these payments shows, it is that little or They have nothing to do with the SNS nor with your needs.

But they are important for certain professionals who receive high pharmaceutical industry payments.

And for the majority medical associations, many of which are multi-million dollar income.

Also for public and private foundations of all types and a multitude of universities and hospitals, also public and private, that thus achieve very generous contributions from pharmaceutical companies.

These payments thus become a real Flea Market in which everyone looks for funds, including Health Directors and some Health Services.

But, of course, the real financier is the SNS to which the pharmaceutical multinationals, with the scandalous prices they impose on medicines thanks to the patent monopoly“they squeeze out all the money they feed it with annually,” the inspector argues.

In that link that I bring you, the author offers tables of his own creation that document his statements well. And he draws conclusions like this:

It is evident the Farmaindustria propaganda [el lobby de la patronal de farmacéuticas en España] and their chorus of parrots, who every year when they publish these data repeat the mantra that ‘our R&D data confirms the sector’s strong commitment to research in our country, an international reference in clinical trials’.

Quite the contrary, what they confirm is the strong commitment of the sector in our country to convert pharmaceutical sponsorship and value transfers into a more tool at the service of your interests economic.”

And among laboratories, they stand out for their generosity to finance health organizations Gilead with 60,563 euros and Janssen, with 51,752. And when it comes to payments to professionals, Gilead also stands out with 1,578 euros on average and Janssen with 1,583, although in this case the most generous is AstraZeneca with 1,781 euros paid on average to each professional.

And if we analyze this market by its extension, it stands out Pfizer with payments to 10,442 professionals and 461 organizations and Janssen with payments to 9,407 professionals and 529 healthcare organizations.

And these high payments, like the high doses of fentanyl, create addiction and junkie Health Organizations, whose economy depends on them. They don’t do it for patronage, it’s pure businesssustained by the abusive prices of the medications that the Administration allows them, which looks the other way while they inject it,” he indicates. Fernandez-Gallardo.

And there is much more, read it in full: payments from 18 pharmaceutical multinationals to 17 scientific societies in 2022.

The communicating vessels between each pharmaceutical company and “its” scientific societies – which you can see in this extraordinary graph -.

Or the sponsoring laboratories of medical congresses.

Ahh, and the money someone receives association of journalists in the health sectorso reluctant to publish things like this that could offend pharmaceutical companies: being the area intended to disseminate this information, it is paradoxically the one that does it the least…

By way of conclusion: «This market must be closed, it is more obscene every day, which feeds on the scandalous prices they impose on their medicines [las farmacéuticas]which is paid by the SNS”.

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