Doctors received $6.5 billion worth of payments -- including meals, research grants and charitable contributions from drug and medical device companies in the last year, according to new data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Thursday. They also owned a little over $1 billion in stock in the industry.
The financial relationships between 618,000 doctors and 1,110 teaching hospitals and nearly 1,500 companies are required to be disclosed under a provision in the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as the "Physician Payments Sunshine Act," because it aims to reveal the breadth and extent of the relationships between doctors and companies.
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