I’m not going to pretend to know much about how the healthcare system works. To be perfectly honest it’s a very confusing system that doesn’t make much sense to me. After a little over a decade in the restaurant industry there is one thing I do know about health care, it’s possible that your doctors opinion is for sale to drug companies.
My Experiences
For the past four years the restaurant that I worked at has been able to increase their profits by offering catering specials to businesses. While the clients who take advantage of these services include companies treating their own employees to lunch, pharmaceutical representatives make up the majority (A pharmaceutical representative is a salesperson for drug companies. Their job is to inform the benefits of a certain drug and persuade doctors to prescribe it to their patients).
The pharmaceutical reps have been great clients for the restaurant I worked for. They provided consistent business no matter the season, and would spend thousands of dollars per month providing lunches for doctors and their staff. But do I want my doctors’ opinion to be bought?
Why I don’t like it.
The human body is extremely complex. We’re still learning new things about how it works every month. It’s so complex that it can take several tests and multiple trips to a doctors office before your receive an accurate diagnosis for symptoms that you’re exhibiting. The medications required to cure diseases are complex and come with side effects, and a lot of them scare me. I’d rather my doctor make an educated and completely unbiased opinion about what regiment is best for me.
If I ever experience heart problems I’d rather have a low-dose aspirin treatment be an option rather than whichever drug is currently being pushed on television. Sometimes it seems as though the 100 or so side effects are worse than the actual disease that they’re meant to cure.
I suppose what I’m saying is that I want to have every option open to me. When I get sick I want to know the homeopathic methods available, drugs, and any procedures which may help my condition. I don’t want my doctor to automatically prescribe me a particular drug because he had a great lunch earlier that day on the pharmacy company’s dime.
The Other Side
Whenever an issue that I feel strongly comes up I try to look at both sides. In this instance the benefits come to restaurants and the doctors staff:
Benefits for restaurants
The restaurant industry is one of the few areas of our economy where a small family ran business can succeed. This industry is very sensitive to the health of the market. I remember times when the mere mention of $5.00 per gallon gas would turn our dining room into a ghost town for a week.
During slow times pharmacy reps offer consistent business for the restaurant. While this does not directly help out servers, it does help cash flow and will hopefully allow the business to continue running until the economy picks up.
Benefits for the staff
I’ll admit that when I delivered lunches to a doctor’s office the staff’s eyes would immediately express their excitement. Who doesn’t like a free lunch? Little perks like this can really make a person’s day.
When you visit your doctor you want their staff to be in a great mood. They’re usually the first people that you talk to and they handle a lot of your tests. Many offices are overbooked and overworked. That “free” meal they received earlier in the day may be just the pick me up that they needed to help keep them in a cheerful mood.
I’m not going to pretend that I wear rose colored glasses. I understand that pharmaceutical reps play an important role for drug companies. Research and development for drugs is important and these companies do need to make a profit to continue discovering new drugs. What I do have a problem with is drug companies buying my doctors’ opinion. I’m not really sure how ethical it is for pharmaceutical companies to buy a doctors recommendation.
The future isn’t all bad though. It seems that pharmaceutical companies may have to make public any financial contributions they make to physicians. What does this mean? I’m guessing there may be a searchable database that will expose whether or not your physician received any compensation from pharmacy companies. This could allow you to match a prescription’s maker with your doctor to see whether or not there is any backscratching going on.
It’s not a perfect solution and there may or may not be a database made. However, I suppose it is a step in the right direction.
What do you think? Are you concerned with the possibility that your physician is accepting a free meal?
There are definitely gray areas like this when it comes to the health care system (or other systems, i.e. lobbyists donating to politicians). Doctors will usually prescribe based on your insurance, though, so though I am not involved in that aspect there may be some lobbying by pharmaceutical companies to get their drugs covered by various insurance companies.
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted..The Worst Plumbing Problem: Sewer Line Issues
Good point DC. I noticed when I was sick my insurance covered my brand name prescription. I asked if I could get a generic version and my Doctor said it didn’t matter because both were covered by my current plan.
Yes. There are huge conflicts of interest in our healthcare system and wayyyy too many people making too much money. Healthcare shouldn’t be a commodity, in my opinion.
Holly@ClubThrifty recently posted..Debt: 4 Reasons to Leave Debt Behind Today
I agree with your thinking. Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. A person’s life shouldn’t have a financial value.
Great insight Justin! I can see both sides of this and as a consumer it does bother me that this goes on. As a marketer myself, I can understand the need for it. However, I am concerned at what could be peddled to the doctors that would result in being given to us.
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That’s the part that bothers me as well John. I don’t mind the marketing promotions that go on. But I really don’t want my doctor prescribing me a drug based on the meal he got earlier in the day.
I know physicians accept a “free” meal all of the time. I have seen it when I worked with medical devices and I have done it. It is the nature of the game and most doctor’s just want to be paid. There are some really good ones out there that will accept the free meal, but it won’t sway their opinion. There are others that make it a bidding war between drug companies and who can offer them the best “meal” if you will!
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What I am concerned about is currently no way to know which doctors have bidding wars with drug companies. This information should be made public so that the consumer can make an educated decision about their care.
Your doctors are definitely being influenced by pharmaceutical reps. It’s not just the lunches. They get thousands of dollars of samples to give out, special coupons to give patients to get them started when their insurance company doesn’t want to cover the drug. My doctor will try to shove every new drug released down my throat, which quite frankly, scares teh hell out of me. In my mind, with many of these new drugs, the cure is worse than the disease!
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I agree. A lot of drugs scare me as well. The free samples and coupons are a great point Jose.
I certainly can’t speak for every doctor. I am not even a “real” one, as my degree is from an optometry school, not an MD, but the only samples available are the newer drugs. No company wants you to push something available in generics. Most prescribers I know, self included, take any samples available and those go to people without insurance. When I write a prescription, it is for the best available drug for the condition taking into account what the patient can pay. If they have awesome insurance, we have lots of choices most of the time. If not, we have to go with what they can pay for. I think most doctors of any type welcome this conversation. All the Rx’s in the world won’t help if you can’t fill them. It is highly illegal for any physician to take kickbacks and even buying a meal has lots of regulations. I think it used to be worse, but there have been lots of crackdowns in the laws. You can always find someone who is dishonest, but I would argue that the majority of primary care physicians want the best for the patient. Maybe I’m naive.
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This is what really scares me about doctors. I used to think that doctors main motivation to was to help sick people get better. Over the course of a long term illness where multiple doctors just gave up on me, I’ve realized that they can be bought, and they care way more about your money than your health.
It’s sad. I understand that medical school is expensive and doctors should make a good living. But medicare schemes and being bought by pharmaceutical companies is very disturbing.
Yes I often think that we are being pushed drugs we don’t need. I do believe we are overmedicated these days. And some of these drugs probably aren’t even being tested enough to prove their safety over the long run. I wonder how much the FDA is being “persuaded” to approve a drug. When it comes down to it, I like to think I know my own body pretty well, and go with my gut instinct, track records, second opinions, etc. Its up to you to advocate for your own health!
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I think that second opinions are very important. I’m lucky to have a loved one who is a physician’s assistant. When I have a medical problem I ask her opinion first. Then after going to the doctor we talk about what they gave me afterwards. I trust her opinion and she is very pro homeopathic treatments, which makes me feel better about preventing over-medication.
I agree totally with Grayson and Jose’. We’ve seen it in our own quest for healthcare a million times. Thus, we’ve taken it upon ourselves (after two very serious mistakes from our former doc) to educate ourselves about natural healing. It has changed our life, Justin. Now, instead of our doc knowing us very well ( a family of six can need the doc ALOT) our new doc probably wouldn’t even know us if you mentioned us by name. We control our health with a largely whole foods diet, exercise, and a super great chiropractor who specializes in natural healing. Don’t misunderstand: we have a wonderful family practitioner who is smart and helpful, but we prefer to be in control of our health instead of letting the docs have control. Because we educate ourselves, we don’t have to worry as much about whether or not he’s making decisions because he’s been bought out.
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I started questioning doctors back when my mom had a medical scare. We went to 4 different doctors with everyone giving a different opinion. From that I learned that doctors are not infallible and are just human like the rest of us.
Nowadays, I do not depend on the doctor and have not visited other than a regular checkup once a year.
chubblywubbly recently posted..Costa Rica: A Thrill Seeker’s Paradise
Ugg this post just reminded me of my last MD appointment. The drug rep came in literally right after me and he was “seen” first. I felt like crap and was beyond aggravated that he was getting more of my MDs time then I was.
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I know how you feel. Last month when I went in for a checkup the doctor was talking to a contractor about what color to stain the trim. I sat in the waiting room for twenty minutes before he finally came in. Sometimes I think that the feel that if you don’t wait you’ll start to think that you’re not getting your money’s worth.