One thing that the article touched on that I like is the role of non-industry associations, which I think could do a lot more to spread information. However, there's no one that will pay them to do it.
You aren't at all worried that paying those doctors will result in them prescribing something to a patient when they might not have otherwise or influence their choice for one option over another? I'm not talking about the education or awareness a doctor might get, purely the influence of the money/benefits and perhaps their hope to get more of the same from you later.
At a high level, companies actually think their products have value to patients and want doctors to know about what it can do. It is virtually impossible to decouple knowledge sharing from influence. The point of knowledge sharing is to impact choice and behavior.
On the services front, If I want to hire a doctor to fly across the country and do Brian surgery on a pig or cadaver, I expect to have to pay them. Similarly, if they are running a clinical trial, I expect to fly them to the surgical training and feed them, and pay for their time.
>purely the influence of the money/benefits and perhaps their hope to get more of the same from you later.
Direct kickbacks for prescriptions are a thing of the past. It is pretty hard to come up with a situation where future benefits is conditional on the behavior. Like, I suppose you wouldn't invite a doctor that doesnt use your product to give feedback on it or be part of a clinical trial, but that is a niche feedback to worry about.
Lastly, articles like are very misleading when it comes to the details. In their reference for $2B in payments [1], includes things like Royalties.
>The greatest proportion (27.3%) of value was from royalty or license payments (≈$484 million of $1.8 billion) followed by service fees (26.6%), such as faculty lectures ($472 million of $1.8 billion).
If they are claiming paying royalty or license payments for inventions (like developing a hip implant) are a kickback, it frames the whole argument as rhetoric.
