Pill popping payola.

Steve - Big Pharma has a great deal for you. When you're not taking your medicine or forgo it all together, they'll pay you to be more compliant.

This New York Times article exposes a strategy we knew Big Pharma was looking into several years ago. The idea, which is being embraced by doctors, pharmacy companies, insurers and researchers, is that paying modest financial incentives up front can save much larger costs of hospitalization.

For instance, in a Philadelphia program people prescribed warfarin, an anti-blood-clot medication, can win $10 or $100 each day they take the drug — a kind of lottery using a computerized pillbox to record if they took the medicine and whether they won that day.

Aetna has begun paying doctors bonuses for prescribing medication likely to prevent problems: beta blockers to prevent heart attacks, statins for diabetes sufferers. Currently, 93,000 doctors are in Aetna’s “pay for performance” program; bonuses average three percent to five percent of a practice’s base income.

CVS Caremark began by discounting copayments for employees of some corporations in its drug plans, to encourage prescription filling, and is studying “the ‘I’ll pay you $10 a month to be adherent’ approach, the lottery approach,” and other incentives, said Dr. Troy Brennan, the chief medical officer.

Even the new federal health care overhaul includes incentives, expanding a program paying pharmacists extra for helping some Medicare patients learn to take pills correctly.

There are so many aspects of this strategy that are wrong that I don't know where to begin. They sure picked a perfect time to introduce this: when people are hurting financially.

Do not let any of the stakeholders fool you into believing that this is anything but a guaranteed path to achieving a Niagra Falls-sized financial windfall. Not taking into account existing patients on meds, how many millions more will be brought into the fold with the lure of financial incentives?

How sad for these patients who will accrue small sums of money, but fail to realize that it will be regurgitated back to the stakeholders in the form of higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, and higher drug prices.

The only explanation for this action is desperation on every front, including the patients that participate.

The funny thing is, as much or more money could be saved by preventing the hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations that occur every year because of the side effects of medication.

Do you feel the same way? We'd like to hear from you.