WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa on Friday made the following comment on the announcement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that it will begin to receive data under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act on Feb. 18. The agency said it will post the data on its website by the end of September 2014. Grassley is the co-author of the bipartisan Sunshine Act, enacted in 2010, that will disclose the financial relationships between drug and medical device companies and doctors. The legislation came after Grassley’s investigative and oversight work exposed numerous examples of major discrepancies between the reporting of payments and the receipt of payments.
“The Sunshine Act will help inform the public about the financial relationships between the drug and medical device industry and doctors. The disclosure of key items will be uniform. Consumers will get a much fuller picture of the industry’s financial presence in medicine than they have now. The trend toward payment transparency is good for the public and good for accountability.”
