Drugging our kids: RX alliance rewards doctors as drug companies get richer

The Los Angeles Daily News analyzed financial ties between drug manufacturers and doctors who prescribed psychotropic medications to California foster children from July 2009 to July 2014. The investigation found that drug makers, anxious to expand the market for some of their most profitable products, spent more than $14 million from 2010 to 2013 to woo the California doctors who treat this captive and fragile audience of patients at taxpayers’ expense. The drug makers distribute their cash to all manner of doctors, but the investigation found that they paid the state’s foster care prescribers on average more than double what they gave to the typical California physician.