Obamacare Creates Blacklist of Doctors Courted by Medical Industry

The Affordable Care Act will mandates creation of a "blacklist" of doctors who get wined and dined by the medical industry, Forbes magazine reports.

"Chances are, especially for those who frequent local steakhouses, many people have witnessed physicians being presented with data pertaining to the newest drug on the market," writes Forbes contributor Dr. Amesh Adalja, an associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity and a member of the U.S. National Disaster Medical System. 

"However, in the name of 'transparency' these industry-sponsored events . . . are now being targeted under a provision of Obamacare" that mandates what Adalja described as "the creation and maintenance of a list of physicians who have been the recipient of a meal paid for by industry."

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Adalja says "the blacklist is an explicit attack" on medical professionals, who, under the new law, are "relegated to the status of government bureaucrats . . . whose arbitrary decisions can be swayed with superficial gifts and who, therefore, require policing."

He says it's "perfectly legitimate if an individual hospital, professional society, or insurance company requires its affiliated physicians to disclose their relationships with industry as a condition of employment or association."

"In such a case a physician is free to refrain from such an arrangement if he deems it unsuitable. A physician is also free to relay his dealings with industry to his patients individually or on a website if he so chooses," Adalja adds. "Under Obamacare, mandates backed by fines for non-compliance replace such judgments."

According to Adalja, the creation of the list will fall under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which is part of the Affordable Care Act. It stipulates that the names of doctors must be reported regardless of whether the product being marketed is — or was — FDA approved for use.

"Such a proviso clearly identifies that the true purpose of this regulation, hiding behind the veil of transparency, is to reinforce the reality to physicians that no longer are they the masters of their own livelihoods or autonomous," Adalja writes.

"They are now mere cogs in what has become almost a total state enterprise in which compliance with any order is the currency."

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