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Doctors are taught and are obligated to prescribe to you, in their opinion, the BEST medication for your condition. Since they are bombarded with representatives from various drug companies, their opinions sometimes get…well…altered. The companies that produce the inexpensive generic medications do not send their representatives to the doctors’ offices. They are busy competing with all the other manufacturers making the exact same generic. The big drug companies are sending representatives out to promote their expensive medication. If they can get doctors to prescribe their drug, the profits come in month after month after month.
Article
The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the doctors who receive them are aware of their size. Critics, including prominent cancer and kidney doctors, say the payments give physicians an incentive to prescribe the medicines at levels that might increase patients’ risks of heart attacks or strokes. Industry analysts estimate that such payments — to cancer doctors and the other big users of the drugs, kidney dialysis centers — total hundreds of millions of dollars a year and are an important source of profit for doctors and the centers. The payments have risen over the last several years, as the makers of the drugs, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, compete for market share and try to expand the overall business.
It's a sad game and many more people could recieve treatment if these things weren't put into a little bottle and marked up hundreds of dollars
Originally posted by Nobama
Exactly it seems if you cant afford it, you dont deserve it.
You got it. We line big pharma's pockets while we all struggle to scrape together all we can to protect our health with these medications. Not to mentions that there seems to be a medication for everything now. Conventional illness just isn't enough anymore.
Originally posted by Ruke37
reply to post by kaleshchand
I'm sure that seeing the inside scoop can at times be very depressing. Just seeing how medications in other countries cost 90% less than in the US is depressing enough. But I guess no one ever said the truth was happy-go-lucky
Originally posted by Nobama
reply to post by kaleshchand
Well if those numbers are accurate thats a kick to the groin knowing I may have to pay out the nose for something that's cheaply made to begin with.edit on 15-4-2011 by Nobama because: (no reason given)