Doctors are making money – LOTS of money for prescribing drugs to you and your family. Chemotherapy kickbacks are the worst. How much are they getting? Check out the detailed infographic below for the shocking statistics. This revenue windfall absolutely has the potential to sway prescribing decisions. Any doctor who claims otherwise is in La La Land.
The practice of drug kickbacks to doctors is a big reason for the the ever increasing prices of drugs and the huge problem of drug affordability.
Not only is this practice of drug kickbacks extremely unethical, it is a danger to your health and the health of your loved ones, particularly if they are in the hospital and vulnerable to exploitation due to serious illness.
Laws that will took effect in 2013 required all pharmaceutical companies to disclose their payments to doctors. This is not enough, however, as doctors asked about their drug kickbacks usually report biased information that their patients readily believe.
Protect yourself! Â Learn the facts and check the national database that lists doctors who are receiving drug kickbacks.
Via: MedicalBillingandCoding.org
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Great Article!
I suspect that most folks starting an education towards becoming a doctor are reasonable, ethical people that really want to help others.
It’s the misguided education system fostered by the drug companies that leads them astray. After graduation most doctors only know how to prescribe drugs and treat symptoms. Curing disease is not among their talents or interests.
What the heck is going on? Drugs are over prescribed, Rebecca. I feel doctors are relying on pharmaceutical companies to dictate their practice than building a relationship with patients and assisting them to practice better self care in their health. I am very leery of doctors, and will be checking into retaining a lawyer myself due to suspected malpractice. Mind you, not to make one bit of money, but to inform others to not trust the medical community as much as we have. You’re very foolish if you do. Patients are counting on doctors’ care and knowledge way too much, and there are too many deaths with the root cause being doctors prescribing medications to mask the bigger problem or provide a quick fix. My primary doctor is Board Certified in Family Medicine and also in Integrative Holistic Medicine. She believes the approach to healing the whole person should be the goal of all doctors. Michael, where are you in your lawsuit?
The point I want to make is that most of the doctors who treated my daughter for four and a half years had very little concern for her as a human being. She eventually ended up with a type of cancer that does not respond to chemo and was prescribed the Sutent. She was threatened by her oncologist to drop her as a patient if she did not follow his orders. She was on so much pain medication it was causing an adverse effect. Further, the cancer was so bad it had literally destroyed her spine from L4 down. She had titanium rods, nuts, bolts, and screws for support of what was left of her spine to her lower extremities. The rods broke twice causing more complications. I believe the doctors AND the drug and apparatus companies should be held accountable.
Just to clarify, it’s psychiatrists that write scripts, not psychologists. Psychologists are not MDs.
All doctors well except a few that actually care get kick backs and roll in the doe, unless you have a dr you can trust then you are at the most risk for being perscribed drugs that can cause all kinds of harmful side effects or even death ????. A physcologist just perscribed me a medication for anxiety called ativan instead of xanax which i was on, didnt ween me off of xanax just switched meds with no regard or care or thought in the world to my health and ativan caused thousands of people to comit suicide or they ended up in a coma and brain damage and then death. And he just sat there looking smug and sent me on my way not listening to anything i had to say. Will be obtaining a lawyer to go after him and have his licence revoked for reckless endangerment. He gave me samples of some medication to help me sleep but they just cause nightmares and night terrors. Wonder where the free samples came from. Its a terrible shame that greed comes before patients lives and safety. They Just send us off to our deaths and sit back and count their money and laugh away. Cant no one tell me different and if they try to then they’re just lying to their selves…..
I find it curious that in all these years, the big “corporation” has never recommended that the doctor prescribe a certain drug over another, pushed for brand name drugs, pressured doctors to write more prescriptions, or use “off-label” prescribing.
Doctors always rely on independent research for prescribing recommendations. This is why drug companies must disclose their relationship if they funded a study. It can bias an outcome.
Anyway, I appreciate your genuine concern to help people be healthy. I’m just weighing in on what I’ve witnessed personally over decades.
The corporation hiring these doctors doesn’t need to pressure them to write lots of prescriptions. The AMA standard of care does that already. See what happens if an internist tries to forgo writing scripts for statins for middle aged patients because they realize them for the health robbing scam that they are. Censure and possible license suspension is pretty much inevitable.
The claims in this article are false. My husband has been a family physician in a large corporation for about 16 years now. He has not and does not receive money for writing any prescription. Years ago, drug reps trying to sell their drugs annoyed the doctors in his practice by telling all the perks to a particular drug during their 10 minutes to hastily eat lunch or dinner, but if a cheaper or generic option was available, that’s what he would write.
The only “kickback” he or anyone in the entire network of physicians received was a lunch here and there. Subway, Costa Vida, or something like that. Never for writing a prescription. And now it’s been years since he has had a drug rep provide any lunch for him or the corporation. (Even searching this list for my husband’s name came up with only $20, for a lunch.)
And that’s where the beauty of the doctor-pharmacist relationship comes in: it guarantees an unbiased opinion regarding YOUR health. Doctors cannot sell a drug to you without a pharmacist (it would be unethical) and pharmacists cannot prescribe something to you without a written prescription from a doctor (because that would be unethical). Doctors don’t make money writing prescriptions–if anything, they loose money because it takes time to go through everything to check for interactions, dosing, sending the prescription, refilling the prescription (all in their “free time.”).
So many times, my husband’s recommendation for a patient is to wait and see, because most doctors are conservative in their treatment approach (which angers a lot of people– they want to be fixed. Today! Right now! But many conditions will improve on their own). Or yes, you really need this specific drug for this specific problem. He doesn’t prescribe drugs for every single patient he sees, because that is not in the best interest of the patient.
But you look at anyone selling a supplement, a miracle cure, a “wonderful cure-all!” and I guarantee they will recommend some costly product that directly benefits themselves. How is that ethical? And “everyone” should take this supplement that cures a list of dozens of ailments (and the supplements don’t work), despite the fact that medically the ailments are very different from each other and all those ailments would not respond to a solitary “wonder cure.”
When you see your doctor, you are paying for a professional opinion. You pay him for his time. He does not get paid extra for writing prescriptions. A pharmacist is paid for selling a drug to you from an unbiased opinion.
Probably because he is an employee … he doesn’t own his own practice. The corporation is taking all the kickbacks.
Taken a step further… psychologists get massive kick backs. They’re one of the most dangerous types of doctors. Since they understand the human mind many of them manipulate their clients into accepting dangerous drugs (after the psychological profile)
I only suspected this until I tried the web. Wow! no wonder the Affordable Care act is always under fire by the GOP ( Good O’l Prescriptions ). We know that most if not all members of congress are owned by either BIG Oil, Big.Pharma, or Big insurance. That is why they wan’t to kill it. They are offered big paydays when it happens. The ACA will cause a stop to price gouging once the Democrats take control of both houses and the presidency on 2018. That is if the Jack Ass, #45 lasts that long. We can only live in hope.