Posts Tagged ‘fraud drug companies’

Medical Chess: How the Drug Companies Use Doctors As Their Pawns

By Chicago Chiropractor

Over the last five years, the number of medications being prescribed by doctors has grown drastically from 2.1 billion, to well over 3.5 billion. The increase is a combination of doctors receiving incentives from the large drug companies that give the patient a prescription to solve there problems even when no medication is necessary, and also a growing number of new generalized illnesses that are easily treated with high priced medication. Nope, doctors usually prescribe the same popular medication that the other doctors are prescribing for that illness. It all depends on who is offering the highest incentives to prescribe their drugs, otherwise known as bribes.

For example, drug companies will offer luxurious cruises and vacations to resorts in exchange for the doctor to listen to a short lecture about a new drug they are about to market. Drug companies have even gone as far as to raise the average wholesale price of their drug, then offer it directly to the doctors for cheaper, and let Medicare reimburse the doctors for the full amount. This might not seem like a big deal but when you’re talking about 2 to 3 hundred dollars extra per prescription that adds up to a lot of money the doctors get to put into their pocket, not to mention your tax dollars are paying for it. Doctors are receiving more incentives than ever to prescribe medication. An astounding 77% of new drugs released have been proven by the FDA to have no advantage over similar drugs already on the market.

They are just remakes of old drugs that drug companies rename then send to the FDA to get approved for a different use. The corruption in the medical industry not only has defrauded the American public out of nearly 100 billion dollars, drug companies continues to raise their already outrageous drug prices to compensate for the money it uses to pay to essentially bribe doctors. Is there anyway to avoid the high prices the American drug companies are charge?

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