pfizer made $35 million in doctor payments in the second half of last year.ut it didn't offer the details willingly. the feds ordered pfizer to make that disclosure as part of a settlement over illegally marketed drugs. the drug industry says it pays doctors to develop and promote new treatments. but critics call the payments a big conflict of interest and say they could even put patients in jeopardy. darren gersh reports. >> reporter: pfizer's long list of payments are an example of what many analysts have long argued: the drug industry has extensive financial ties with the doctors who prescribe its products. while doctors do need to work on drug research and development, the pew prescription project's allan coukell says other payments raise serious ethical concerns. >> there are a lot of doctors who are out there giving speeches which are essentially promotional. they are functioning as a marketing arm of the companies, and we just think that has the potential to influence prescribing and isn't consistent with evidence-based medicine that's guided by good s

just fear of retaliation but the first surprise is the legal of pfizer's said it is more complex not just bilateral retaliation but a systematic reciprocity with the united states violates the law or comes up with a new interpretation but dilutes the outlawed not just the other countries to use it against us in the future, they will that is not in our long-term interest rather they will start using it against each other in the future including our allies part of this for example, the seidman united states in its intervention into kosovo developed something that looked very close to humanitarian intervention. russia, a couple years later use that as an excuse for going into south ossetia in georgia and perry did the same bank which that the united states and the allies used in 1999. that is the system regressed. them there is of reputation. you may say it is a superpower we are much higher so the diplomatic might should be up there. the one thing you might consider that henry kissinger said it is lonely at the top of there is only one superpower there will be a natural balance. mayb

what about pfizer? pfizer just paid $2.3 billion, the largest settlement in u.s. history. attorneys know that when you settle, you settle because you are afraid of what may happen if you actually go to court. that is why you settle. $2.3 billion. $668 million to medicare. and the rest to medicaid. that was just this year. four other possible companies. mylan, astrazeneca, and another just paid $124 million to medicaid this year. another was fined $23.4 million. all these were done by the attorney general's office. that is just this year. i can go back six, seven, eight years, attorneys general in the bush administration and others that went after these companies and got all these fines and settlements. hundreds of millions of big dollars. that is good. i applaud the attorneys general for doing that. both the present attorney general and his predecessors. but what can we put in place so they don't do that in the first place? i hope your department will look at that. how was it that these pharmaceutical companies got by with this? some of them got by with it -- this did not

and financial stories based on value would be pfizer and merck.hink the biggest influence for pfizer and merck, quite frankly, is the direction of the economy. if we do get a fierce recovery, then, you know, pfizer and merck are not going to keep pace. if the market moves to being more defensive, then those stocks would certainly be favored. >> any conflicts of things that youown, or get your disclosures? >> so deutsche bank, i would assume, you know, in our asset management group, owns all of these stocks. i would think that our investment bankers are always looking for business from all of these stocks. and i've no material nonpublic information on any of them, either. >> thanks, barbara. >> thank you, joe. have a great day. >> okay, you, too. >> a divided house the morning after the historic vote. we'll be joined by two congressmen with very different opinions on health care reform. republican scott garrett, democrat greg meeks straight ahead. and later fed matters, st. louis federal reserve bank president jim bullard will stop by the "squawk"

so we are definitely a little concerned with pfizer and their patent ex operations. but that is one of the cheaper stocks right now. we would stay away from both the insurers and the hospitals. there's too much uncertainty there. >> and there is some set of refirm on the financial regulation,s a well. this has been an uphill battle, hank, for about nine months now. still, do you feel any sense of certainty? it's been nine months of basically a pregnancy of uncertainty. >> well, you know, financial reform is something we put under the headwind of uncertainty from washington. cap and trade, financial reform, where the tax code will play out in 2011, that's are all uncertainties that should be cleared up as we get towards the end of 2010 and, therefore, clarity is better than uncertainty and that headwind will dispaid for the market. so it is still, with the economy, a babble such as the powerful head winds of monetary stimulus and fiscal stimulus versus the leveraging of uncertainty. >> volumes have been a bit on the low side. wa do you make of the market right somehow

companies because i have all kinds of work that went down in my house and i would like to have the pfizeravilion -- [talking over each other] >> but i haven't had that opportunity. >> you used this in relation to children and therapy and i had to remember everyone knows about that caribbean. you say there is this idea that kids are being sent to therapy. it is a -- upper middle-class driving thing. >> i borrowed a phrase from a washington post piece in 2004 coldwell this therapy and it was a description, was not an unsympathetic peace because it was written by a woman whose daughter had gone through a lot of these therapies and it described the frantic efforts parents make, it was very expensive, to find solutions and often going outside of mainstream medical opinion to try out various medical therapies that are not necessarily recommended by doctors but a lot of parents think will do their kids some good. i don't know if this would put occupational therapy in that category or not. it depends on what it is for. it is somewhat debated. but things like auditory retraining therapy or a physi

health care driven by large phrma and you can invest in specifically vanguard etf which has pfizer and merck, and johnson and johnson and amgen, and there is even uncertainty in the market, health care is a defensive type position, but i think that where the demographics overlay these types of companies, i think it could do quite well in 2010. i like that space, and then also we have owned for a while is technology space. this for example igm which is the north american technology index is also an etf and driven by companies like microsoft, and cisco, and ibm and google and apple, and those are companies without a lot of financing, and they can reap benefit early in the recovery sector, so i mention igm. >> and research in motion, we are waiting for the earnings after the bell. would you buy this stock? >> we don't own that stock. but in the technology space, you want diversification, because you can have some a lot of high volatility in the individual names like rimm, so that the best way the play it is in the sector level. >> thank you, gentlemen, and your time, and we will see you s

. >> hospital operators and drug maker like merck and pfizer ending higher now that it's clear the companies more customers. health insurers finished mixed. aetna holding onto a slight gain. humana pulling back 1%. looking outside of the health care sector, citigroup on fire adding more than 3.5% on an enthusiastic ratings upgrade. citi is poised to return to its former status as a "money making machine." and household products retailers william sonoma soaring more than 12% after beating expectations. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now back to "hardball." >>> welcome back to "hardball." the health care debate has been notable for the lies surrounding it as the effort that it took to get it done. there is now a published list of the top facts you should know about health care reform. there's no new benefits for illegal immigrants. the access they have to emergency care will stand but nothing new. the government will not pay for elected abortions. this is not a take over of health care like the canadian or british models. i love the list. i rely on it. we should note you fol

a year ago, january 2009, pfizer, the world's largest drug company, was allowed to take over wyeth in a $68 million deal the manager said, we're going to do this because it's going to allow to us get rid of 19,000 jobs. that's just one case, and that's actually in some ways not the biggest issue because what monopolization does, it doesn't just eliminate existing jobs. it eliminates the potential to create new jobs. it does that in a couple ways. one of these makes sense, which is that monopolization for a big company -- monopolization eliminates its incentives to create new jobs. if you own the market, you cut back on costs. you can get what you want pretty much by charging your customers more or paying your suppliers less. but what about small companies? actually in recent years we have come to understand that most new jobs are created by small countries. the problem here is that when you have monopolization at the upper level, there's less and less space for the small companies to occupy. there's fewer niches for them to move into. they may have a better idea. might have some entir

other wildly held are our parent helds and our parent company general electric, and exxonmobil, and pfizer and at&t and verizon. bob? >> well, amongst traders, this is dubbed the loveless rally. why the trading markets and volatility are anemic. and here to talk about that problem is the head of the derivative sales, and tim quan over at the u.s. investment strategies. let me start with you, tim, the volatility is not a satisfactory answer, so why are we seeing the low volatility? >> well, we are seeing tremendous capacity in the money market, and a risk for assets, so that is certainly adding to it. generally speaking, we are seeing a lot of clients with reduced risk to a large extent. >> tim, we want to change your mike here, because we are getting bad sound. well, would you agree with tim, because there is buying tension out there? >> well, equity funds are going well in 2009, and very good returns, and they are not scared anymore, and they came in to the new year, and everybody set the p&l to zero, and so less protection for the beginning of the year. when they start to make money, whe

and pfizer took a hit after a boston jury found the company guilty of marketing fraud related to onelepsy drugs. the company plans to appeal the verdict. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now back to "hardball." >>> now that they passed it, now that we passed it, they're already promising to repeal it. they're actually going to run on a platform of repeal in november. you've been hearing that. and my attitude is, go for it. >> welcome back to "hardball." president obama, there he is telling republicans that if they want to run a repeal health care reform, that it's a good time to go for it. that's their plan, go for it. anyway, with health care reform now signed into law, what strategy should democrats and republicans use in the mid-term races? steve mcmahon is a democratic strategist. and sweeney todd harris is also with us, he's a republican strategist. anyway, mr. todd, since it's your turn to attack, ha do you make of this repeal and replace? the replace part sounds pretty weak. like gee whiz, i wish we had a health care plan, but we don't, so going to pretend lik

administration and clinton administration along with paul williams and the office of the people what pfizer which is the subject of this book and the role of international law in the shaping of foreign policy. to get paul and i after leaving the state department created a non-governmental organization called public international law and policy group which paul will tell you more about it this is our second book to get there, the 13th book that i've written and i am looking very much forward to telling you all about it this evening. >> thank you, michael p. ribaldry quick 32nd introduction. my name is paul williams, professor at american university both in law school and school of international service and it's a great pleasure to be back in cleveland again. michael invites me out every now and then to give a talk or purpose of hate in his conference this and exchange ideas with his colleagues at case western. it is a pleasure to be out here from american university. i'm also the director of the organization michael and i ron called the public international law and policy group which is a gl

. >> rose: you're worried about the pfizers of our time?am worried about capital being available for creative activity in the health care industry. i... capital tends to go where it gets the best return. if you're investing capital, are you really going to invest in an industry that's headed towards some sort of very heavy controls from the federal government? i doubt it. or if you are it's going to be very high premium to get that investment. >> rose: unless you find more innovative ways to do it. do you worry also-- and this is the reason i wanted you on the this program today-- are you worried about america becoming less of a xetive? that our whole structure and system is going to be less competitive in a world-- stealing tom friedman's ideas that is more and more flat? >> well, i don't think there's any question about that. that worries me as much as anything. i mean, the simple fact is that as you expand... i've said this a couple times in a couple different ways, maybe not as well as i should have. as you expand the size of government

pfizer in her residence hall. -- was the important role that she played as a minority in peer adviserin her residence hall. she served as an advisor to the dormitory will cultural council -- multicultural council. she was also related to other diversity related issues that can arise on college campuses. i must add that she accomplished all of this while maintaining an excellent academic record. but that is all. she also volunteered in detroit with an immigrant rights organization and sought to build coalitions across the disenfranchised communities. as a junior, she co-founded the progressive students of color caucus to address inequities on campus. after graduating, she worked for a progressive think tank, the center for american progress, in its use organizing the vision. -- its youth organizing division. others have provided outstanding role models for the women students. i note that tradition has been strongly continued by professors such as angela davis and cynthia jones. given her record of working to achieve fairness and justice for those who lack it, the national association o

rated pfizer, i want to know [unintelligible] it you are truly for prosperity in this country, therere other ways to pay for this. we spent $5 million a year on their defense appropriations. we go to wars when no one attacked us. does that $100 billion a year. start paying for people's education and health. in iraq and afghanistan, we have more civilian contractors making tons of money than we have soldiers. if you really want to -- what would you propose to do about this? if you have got to and bill insurance and to get into an accident your insurance goes up, the same way to deal with health insurance and do not smoke. i do not eat badly. i maintain a healthy lifestyle. i should not be forced to find someone who is irresponsible with their life choices. i never use my health insurance. i paid $2,000 for my family. i see people that are obese and abuse themselves. i have to support them. host: we will leave it there. guest: that problem is made worse by this piece of legislation which uses a modified community ratings and prohibit adjusting payments based on the risk factors. many c