Hold Pharmaceutical Companies and ALL Health Practitioners Accountable for Kickbacks

  • by: Susan V
  • recipient: US Congress

The Physician Payment Sunshine Act requires pharmaceutical companies to disclose certain payments and gifts of value given to doctors and teaching hospitals. But this act excludes physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

As a result of this loophole, says ProPublica, some non-doctors have been getting huge kickbacks for pushing on their patients certain medical devices and medications, some of them highly addictive and/or expensive.

For example, in Connecticut a nurse practitioner pleaded guilty to accepting $83,000 from Insys Therapeutics “in exchange for prescribing its high-priced medication Subsys to treat cancer pain” and for delivering promotional talks, according to Propublica.

The good news is that this corruption may soon be reigned in if a new bill, the Provider Payment Sunshine Act, becomes law.

Ask Congress to pass this new bill to help prevent all health practitioners from exploiting patients and to hold medical corporations accountable for gifts of value given to those who prescribe their drugs, medical devices or other treatments.

We, the undersigned, agree that nurse practitioners and others who prescribe medications and treatments should be held to the same gift-reporting requirements as doctors.


A ProPublica investigation “ found that nurse practitioners and physician assistants wrote about 10 percent of the nearly 1.4 billion prescriptions" in a Medicare program in 2013” and that “They wrote 15 percent of all prescriptions nationwide (not only Medicare) in the first five months of this year.”


And that's not all Propublica's investigation revealed. This same group of practitioners were among the top prescribers of narcotic controlled substances.


With all the harm these highly addictive drugs do to the health and lives of Americans, its absolutely essential these drugs are not prescribed unless absolutely necessary and, in most cases, not prescribed long term. Certainly if those prescribing them are getting kickbacks for doing so, the public has every right to know about it.


Co-sponsor of the new bipartisan Provider Payment Sunshine Act, Richard Blumenthal, told news sources that the Connecticut nurse practitioner kickback case was “a clear, loud alarm bell” and that this legislation is “absolutely necessary in today’s world.” According to ProPublica, Senator Chuck Grassley, who introduced the bill, says it’s meant to provide the transparency that will ‘bring accountability.”


We request that members of Congress quickly hear and pass this new bill to protect the public from exploitation and poor health resulting from provider kickbacks.


Thanks for your time.

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