Doctors are very good at keeping tabs on earnings of others but have no limits on the estimates of their own value. We in turned are conditioned to respect doctors as the vessels which carry the whole of healthcare. Nothing could be further from the truth. Talk to a very large percentage of doctors outside the office and you find that money is there bottom line. They're all for tort reform so you can't recover a large settlement when they are negligent. They grouse endlessly about how much they have to pay for malpractice insurance. I recently saw a doctor get into a private chauffeured limousine with a vanity plate outside a major NY hospital. I don't know too many pharma execs that live that high on the hog. Did I mention the chauffeur was armed. I guess you can make people angry when you flaunt wealth like that. My own doctor lamented not making as much money as "those wallstreet guys" just before he forgot I was in the hospital for a week. Oops.
Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
81–90 of 329 posts
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no direct experience seeking a prescription, but I do know a doctor who has repeatedly complained to me about patients coming to him with the expectation of receiving a particular drug. He's considered giving up his DEA license to reduce this problem.
One I see in the field as a paramedic? "Any drug allergies?" "Aspirin, Tylenol, Tramadol, etc" "Oh, so you're allergic to 'all' non-narcotic pain medication? That must be ... inconvenient."
I was taken in an ambulance to the hospital once for a dislocated limb. I never understood why the paramedics seemed to find new satisfaction in life when I rejected the narcotic painkiller. Must have come as a pleasant surprise.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#83Over and over people on HN come to the defense of advertising. Doctors tend to be Republican and free-market adherents. So why would they be against drug advertising? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair
> Doctors tend to be Republican and free-market adherents. Where did you get this idea from?
Not to mention this idea:
> Over and over people on HN come to the defense of advertising.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone, something, or some organization needs to be responsible for properly communicating and educating consumers on a drug Why shouldn't this just be their doctor?
The best reason, in my opinion, is that there are new drugs all the time. The FDA approves on the order of 20 or so drugs per year (that's new drugs, not including new generic versions of old drugs). So physicians have to learn 2 new drugs per month in enough depth to consider how it should change their current prescribing habits.
Even if consumers were informed by some mysterious agency, doctors would still have to learn new things all the time, including which new drugs are appropriate to prescribe for which conditions. Since doctors have to learn that stuff anyhow, and since they already talk to patients, I don't think explaining drugs to patients is a particularly big burden.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#85Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Demonstrating that consumers have trouble with insurance decisions implies nothing about their ability to make care decisions.
Most healthcare consumers don't shop around by cost for their healthcare, either because they can't (emergency services) or because its too damn hard (example below). I encourage you to call your three closest hospitals, pick three surgical procedures, and ask them what the cash rate is from their chargemaster. You may get an answer from one hospital, possibly.
Most healthcare consumers don't shop around by cost for their healthcare because they don't pay the bills.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because a free market gives its consumers what they want and even rational people will take opiates over a constructive life
because a free market gives its consumers what they want and even rational people will take opiates over a constructive life And? If that's their preference who are you (or I, etc.) to say otherwise?
People with addictions don't have preferences in the sense you mean. The nature of addiction is that it subverts and overrides the (delicate) mechanisms of rational choice.
If the principle we live by is maximizing total individual freedom, then I think freedom from addiction has to be part of that.
For that matter, much of the point of advertising is also to subvert one's preferences. So as a believer in individual freedom, I'm in favor of ending corporate freedom to profitably manipulate individuals.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone, something, or some organization needs to be responsible for properly communicating and educating consumers on a drug Why shouldn't this just be their doctor?
The best reason, in my opinion, is that there are new drugs all the time. The FDA approves on the order of 20 or so drugs per year (that's new drugs, not including new generic versions of old drugs). So physicians have to learn 2 new drugs per month in enough depth to consider how it should change their current prescribing habits.
And now, when advertising is allowed, doctors don't have to learn those new drugs?
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#89I've never understood the logic behind prescription drug ads. The first rule of sales is to pitch the decision maker. You can't buy prescription drugs without a doctor's authorization, so basically the ads are asking people to go beg their doctors for medicine they may, or may not, need. The doctor, in turn, may give in to the patient's emotional pleas, since they are, in effect, in a customer service business. This…
> As for the free market, we do not have a free market in medicine. It is highly regulated through insurance and government regulation. So, I don't see a problem there.
Plenty of us do.
The absence of a "free market" in this situation isn't merely a difference of driving economic theory, but of bodily sovereignty.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#90I've never understood the logic behind prescription drug ads. The first rule of sales is to pitch the decision maker. You can't buy prescription drugs without a doctor's authorization, so basically the ads are asking people to go beg their doctors for medicine they may, or may not, need. The doctor, in turn, may give in to the patient's emotional pleas, since they are, in effect, in a customer service business. This…
"I've never understood the logic behind prescription drug ads. The first rule of sales is to pitch the decision maker." Plenty of logic is there. Part of the purpose is to make the Doctor pay attention to the advertising that they see in a journal. [1] How? Patient goes in and "asks their doctor" about a drug. Then another patient. And another. So now when the doctor sees an ad (or the detail man comes in) the doctor…
Patient goes in and "asks their doctor" about a drug.
I wonder if this really ever happens. I mean, for many of the ads, it's hard to tell even what the drug does, so going to your doctor and asking for that med would amount to a random question.