Medical non-profits under investigation

[Guest guest]

by GoozNews ~ 22 Oct 2009 07:59am (http://www.gooznews.com/print/3138)

Sen. Grassley (R-IA) released the results of his investigation into

the National Alliance on Mental Illness yesterday with the unsurprising

result that 3/4s of its revenue or about $23 million came from drug

companies, according to the

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/health/22nami.html?ref=todayspaper) _New York

Times_

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/health/22nami.html?ref=todayspaper) _._

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/health/22nami.html?ref=todayspaper) The

story said about a dozen major patient

advocacy non-profits were under investigation.

NAMI's response was that it wanted to reduce its reliance on drug industry

funding, and has begun publishing the names of major donors (over $5,000)

on its website. Most non-profits already do that. Indeed, they have honor

rolls on their websites proudly proclaiming their list of corporate donors.

Question to Sen. Grassley: I spent years trying to figure out how much

money non-profits took from industry (my self-generated guideline for declaring

a non-profit advocacy or research group " industry funded " was 50 percent

of revenue). Self-disclosure is incomplete and unreliable, rarely includes

amounts (and even in those cases is usually in ranges), and never compares

total corporate contributions to annual budgets. Internal Revenue Service

990s do not reveal individual contributions. Wouldn't a simple solution be to

include industry payments to non-profits in the Physician Payments

Sunshine Act, which you included in the Senate Finance Committee's version of

health care reform?