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Cable company logic: "Our predatory anti-consumer practices are really pro-consumer"
(discuss.tchncs.de)
Will anyone actually buy this argument?
You know what's also nice? Bribes to the regulating officials. Junkets. Free samples. Fancy dinners. Golf games. Promises of no-show jobs if their political career tanks.
Some doctors gladly overprescribe opioids (or bad SSRIs like Seroquel) for a few free lunches from a pharma spokesperson hottie.
People with political power are cheap.
It's why the rest of us have that lean and hungry look.
You know, I can't speak for the baby bells or other industries and definitely not politicos, but I've never understood that conspiracy theory about doctors getting money from Big Pharma. I by no means endorse Skrelli bros but I've been a doctor for a decade and while I do take advantage of free lunches whenever I can get them, I just prescribe what I want to and I don't get any money whenever I do so. Most of the time I just heckle the company throughout the lunch and don't use their product. Seroquel helps a lot of people and while I don't prescribe it, it's basically the Kleenex or Scotch tape of antidepressants and nobody gets any special kick backs when they write it, they know their patients are just getting it from India over the internet anyway or CVS/DR/Walgreens/Rite Aid just swaps it for the generic. inb4 studies showing slight biases towards companies you got a free pen from, I still don't get any kickbacks. No matter what I do the fake blonde with fake nails and lashes shows up faithfully to get my office staff Panera or Chick-fil-A. It's pennies to them and I usually skip cause I'm trying to avoid carbs.
You're not most doctors. Your a doctor. Also bribes and propaganda can affect you whether consciously or not. My own doctor of twenty years (now retired) only took pharma submissions through regular channels.
Seroquel came to mind because I personally witnessed someone who suffered from dystonia as a side effect of Seroquel, months before the class action that the side effect was understated (or misrepresented) when it was being tested for FDA approval.
That said, the lunches-for-overprescription pattern was discovered and highlighted during investigations into the opioid epidemic in the United States, in which, yes, a lot of lunches were bought by Purdue pharmacy representatives, and yes, a lot of correlating doctors over-presribed OxyContin, and whether or not it's a matter of neglect, laziness or willful malice to exploit the inflated medical market and poor Americans, the opioid crisis continues to this day, with 109,600 Americans dying from opioid overdoses in 2023.
I can cite plenty of other industries in which good press is bought and regulatory departments are captured with bribes, in pay or in kind. I'm personally familiar with the game industry and photography industry. But I can't help but be bitter about the medical industry, having seen the effects of bad medicine on friends and family, when not experiencing it personally.
I would hope someone with your education would understand the difference between data and an anecdote. For the record we aren't even mad at most doctors. We're mad at the Pharma industry for introducing such corruption to our medical system.