Is Your Doctor On The Take?

Are big pharmaceutical companies paying off your doctor to prescribe their drugs? Enormous pharmaceutical companies are spending billions on advertisements for drugs. Our TVs bombard us daily with drug ads and it turns out that T.V. ads are only the tip of the iceberg.

Many doctors have profitable, cozy relationships with pharmaceutical companies. Don’t lawyers call that a conflict of interest? If your trusted doctor is getting money, perks or other incentives from drug companies whose medicine he is prescribing, shouldn’t you know about it?

‘Doctors who got money from drug and device makers—even just a meal—prescribed a higher percentage of brand-name drugs overall than doctors who didn’t, our analysis showed. Indeed, doctors who received industry payments were two to three times as likely to prescribe brand-name drugs at exceptionally high rates as others in their specialty.’

Source: Pro Publica

Dr. Lena Wen above completely blew me away with the T.E.D. talk (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) she gave about doctors and big pharmaceutical companies. She snatched the white coat off a lot of physicians.

I couldn’t believe how some of those “intelligent and civilized” physicians reacted after she exposed some of their shady practices.  It got real ugly, real fast. Surprisingly, some of these supposedly the cream of our society, our doctors, retaliated. It’s almost unbelievable. I mean, they acted just like a gang of street thugs. You can watch her incredible T. E. D. talk above.

We usually believe that our doctor prescribes the best, most advanced drug available to treat our condition. If anyone’s looking out for our health, it’s our doctor,

Right?

How To Find Out If Big Pharma Paid Off Your Doctor

As you saw in the T.E.D. talk above, there are plenty of excellent doctors out there who have their patient’s best interest in mind when prescribing drugs: whosmydoctor.com. There are also thousands of physicians, who receive millions of dollars, to offer their patients a particular companies drug; even though there are other drugs that are cheaper and more effective.

For more information be sure and read: How Money From Pharmaceutical Companies Sways Doctors’ prescriptions

It is also worth noting;

As of this fall, as part of the Affordable Care Act, all drug makers were required — for the first time in history — to publicly disclose their payments to doctors.

Source: These are the Drugs Doctors get Paid the Most to Promote

Thanks, ObamaCare. You can also look up payments from pharmaceutical companies to your doctor: Click Here.

Enjoy the rest of your week. God be with you until we meet again.

Doctors photo credit