Vermont to track drug company promotion pay to docs -- others to follow?

Starting next year, consumers in Vermont will be able to use a computer database to look up how much pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers are paying doctors and health-care workers to push their products.

Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell's office spearheaded the unique drug marketing disclosures campaign earlier this month, in hopes of improving patient confidence in the health-care system. Relationships between medical companies and doctors aren't often examined in the public eye, thanks in part to longstanding "trade secrets" protection covering the incentives some doctors receive to prescribe certain drugs.