Doctors Prescribe Expensive Drugs to their Patients
If it’s more expensive, it must be better, right?
It’s not enough that the drug companies have the medical
establishment convinced that the answer to everything is another
risky, needless drug
Now they’ve got to make sure our doctors prescribe only the most
expensive ones, too.
According to CNN.com, some recent large-scale research shows
that during calendar year 2001, more than 130,000 hypertension
sufferers in the state of Pennsylvania were prescribed newer or
more expensive drugs for their condition than prevailing medical
guidelines (how these are arrived at and whether they’re right or
not is another story altogether) characterized as necessary a
whopping 40% of the time!
These patients accounted for more than 2 million prescriptions for
high blood pressure drugs – at a cost to the state of nearly $50
MILLION. The study also calculates that such drug “upsells” cost
consumers an extra 1.2 billion dollars per year nationwide.
And that’s just for ONE CONDITION! Imagine how much of our
money this practice is wasting across the entire spectrum of
modern medicine.
Why is this happening? Most likely because of drug company
advertising and “guerilla marketing,” according to the study’s
authors. This is a subject I’ve written extensively about before in
the Daily Dose and my newsletter, but never before have I
encountered a body of research that puts into dollars and cents just
how costly the needless over-prescription of ultra-expensive new
drugs really is.
And it’s only going to get worse: Now that the American Heart
Association has once again slashed its already ridiculously low
guidelines for what it considers “healthy” cholesterol levels, the
drug giants will no doubt release their sales hounds to brainwash
doctors far and wide into writing everyone and their brother
prescriptions for ever-newer, ever-more-costly (not to mention
risky and largely needless) cholesterol drugs.
Why do drug companies have such a magnetic hold over the hearts
and minds of our supposedly “objective” MDs? Keep reading
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Prescription for criminal intent?
In the past, I’ve told you about how drug companies will stop at
nothing to convince young, nave, or impressionable doctors to
prescribe their poisons – whether patients need them or not.
These guerilla marketing practices include planting young,
attractive sales reps near hospital mailrooms to “detail” (see also
“flirt with”) doctors about unlisted or unapproved uses for their
newest and most expensive medications.
But this kind of shameless (but legal) promotion is just a drop in
the bucket. Apparently, some drug companies are offering
MONETARY KICKBACKS to hospitals – and even individual
doctors – for (over) prescribing certain patented medications.
In a court case that’s no doubt being monitored closely by drug
makers and the medical establishment, 11 current and past sales
execs for one major pharmaceutical maker are being tried for just
such bribery, according to ABCNews.com. This same drug
company recently shelled out more than $800 million to settle
charges that it inflated prices on its big-name prostate drug!
Also detailed in the report were the no doubt all-expenses-paid ski
trips to Aspen, golf outings to Scottsdale, Arizona-plus
“education grants” to cover binge-drinking doctors’ high-dollar bar
tabs!
I guess this shouldn’t really surprise me though. As you may
know, I’ve been sounding the alarm about this sort of thing for
years. What surprises me is the willingness of some doctors to be
utterly corrupted and completely abandon the Hippocratic oath
Hope yours isn’t one of them.
Over-prescribing the truth,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
