Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa today made the following comment on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) release of new data on the money paid by drug and medical device makers to doctors and teaching hospitals for product research, compensation for consulting, speaking engagements and other purposes. The database was made possible under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which Grassley co-authored and saw through to enactment into law. The 2014 data includes information about 11.4 million financial transactions attributed to over 600,000 physicians and more than 1,100 teaching hospitals, totaling $6.49 billion. This is the second year of data collection.
"CMS has worked and continues to work to fulfill the Sunshine Act and also has taken action to make Medicare payment data more transparent. There's a strong public interest in knowing where this money goes and why. Consumers, researchers and other members of the public benefit from disclosure. The Sunshine Act is working as intended to shine light on part of the health care system that many of us didn't know much about before."
More information on CMS' release today is available here and here.
