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by pessimizer
1546 days ago
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Nah. Speakers fees are a way to launder direct contributions. There was at least one famous case where the "conference" was done in one of the speakers' living rooms. Imagine getting a speaking fee for speaking extemporaneously in a Florida hotel room with two pharma reps and one other doctor five minutes before you all leave for golf. |
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The comparison to money laundering is specious, IMHO.
In the US, at least, there is a database[0] of any value (including monetary and in-kind) exchange between doctors and medical companies.
As such, there is no "laundering" at all. All moneys and in-kind (hotel rooms, meals, swag, etc.) payments are documented and detailed.
Is there an incentive for doctors to favor a particular pharma or medical device company based on those payments? Perhaps. But since (again, at least in the US) such payments are documented and publicly available, it isn't some sort of secret set of payments designed to surreptitiously co-opt doctors.
Sure, some payments (my brother, a physician, received ~US$20,000 in 2020, mostly (~$13,000) from a single consulting fee.
Is my brother favoring the company who paid him $13,000 in 2020? Maybe. But if and only if their products/devices have clear beneficial effects over other products/devices.
What's more, that $20,000 (aside from the consulting fee, it was food/beverage and other in-kind stuff) is a small fraction of his annual income and doesn't make a significant difference in his quality of life.
As such, while there may certainly be doctors who are co-opted/corrupted by medical companies, assuming that the majority of doctors are swayed by such things is iffy at best.
[0] https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/