Mental Health Blogs

I’ve been wrestling with how to say something sensible about the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill, but what can you say when the country is literally ripping itself apart over the shape of the reforms and an unexpected side show has broken out over race and the contention that opposition to reform–and to President Barack Obama himself–is racially-motivated? There’s damn little that’s safe to say in that environment, especially when I myself have been a victim of racial discrimination (at UC Berkeley no less and at the hands of the New York Times and other media companies) and had that limit my career opportunities, my future earning potential and, yes, my dreams. I ain’t making that up, but I’m not getting into it today.

It’s not clear to me whether or not the Senate Dems have got the votes to get the bill approved and the whole thing is so big and complex that I’m not sure if it should be approved in its present form. But the bill authored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) does have one provision in it that I support 100 percent and that’s the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which is embedded in the bill. The Act has floated around the Senate for a few years and was authored by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.). Simply put, it would require drug and device makers to report to the feds any payment or gift to a doctor or researcher of $10 or more or face a $1 million penalty. The reports would later become available to the public on the Internet.

Sounds good to me, although I wouldn’t necessarily support the Baucus bill on the basis of its sunshine provision. I merely hope that whatever House or Senate bill eventually winds up being passed (assuming something can get passed in D.C.’s noxious environment) and heads to the President for his signature will contain the sunshine provision. I’m tired of waiting for the lawsuits to come out about Drug X or Y to find out about all the dough Harvard’s Joseph Biederman was getting from Janssen/J&J and that Pfizer was paying for a psychiatrist’s helicopter rides to go shill for Geodon and so on.

I expect we’ll have some kind of answer on what health care reform will or won’t look like by mid-October.

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5. The Nanny State Gets Into Senate Health Reform Bill