Sunshine Law to Shed Light on Drug Company Dollars

One step at a time, my effort to achieve public disclosure of payments from pharmaceutical drug makers to doctors is becoming a reality. This month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services put up its website with guidelines for the National Physician Payment Transparency Program, which will post payments from drug, device and biologics makers to licensed physicians beginning in 2014. The goal of my reform effort is to help inform consumers and patients in all medical fields about financial relationships between drug makers and doctors with uniform disclosure. The public deserves a much better picture of the drug industry’s financial presence in... Read more

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Quid Pro Quo Leaves Taxpayers, Whistleblower with Questions

A report on a year-long investigation that I’ve been working on was released today that showed Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez orchestrated a controversial deal with the city of St. Paul, Minn., that prevented the Justice Department from recovering hundreds of millions of dollars back to the taxpayers, and left a whistleblower out in the cold. The report I released with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte provides details and documentation about how Perez manipulated a deal in which the federal government would decline to be a part of two False Claims Act cases pending against St. Paul, Minn., in exchange for the... Read more

Easing the Pressure on High Caseload Federal Courts

The federal judiciary is one of the most respected institutions within the federal government. Yet, it’s clear that the caseloads in each of the federal circuit courts vary widely. So, last week I introduced legislation to ease pressure on the heavy workloads of the Second and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, which are two of the busiest circuit courts in the country. My legislation would add a seat to both the Second and Eleventh Circuit Courts and remove three seats from the D.C. Circuit Court. These changes make sense. Currently, the D.C. Circuit has 108 appeals filed per authorized judgeship, the lowest in the nation. By contrast, the Second Circuit has 425 appeals filed per authorized judgeship and the Eleventh Circuit, the busiest appeals court in the country, has 583 appeals filed per authorized judgeship. In addition, when you measure the amount of work the court is accomplishing, the D.C. Circuit is by far the lowest in the nation with 108 total appeals concluded per authorized judgeship. By comparison, the Second Circuit is four times higher and the Eleventh Circuit is five times higher, at 540 appeals concluded per authorized judgeship. And lastly, when you look at the number of appeals the court hasn’t yet addressed or the cases that are outstanding, the D.C. Circuit has 120 appeals pending per authorized judgeship, which means it is essentially tied for last with the Tenth Circuit that has 115. In contrast, the Second Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit have 343 and... Read more