Ever been to a boxing match and not known whom to root for? It's kind of like that with a little situation in New York: It's a courtroom brawl between state-hired lawyers looking to cash in (sound familiar?) and pharmaceutical manufacturers who've allowed doctors and pharmacists to profit by recommending their drugs over competing products... A real winner, huh? The judge presiding over this one must feel like boiling himself every night to de-louse. Here's the basic story: Drug makers set prices for their poisons - er, I mean products - which the government and insurance companies must then adhere to in reimbursing doctors and pharmacists for the drugs they've dispensed, BUT... They then sell those very same drugs to those very same docs and pharmacists at a much lower price, allowing them to profit greatly (up to 79 percent in some instances) by writing prescriptions for them instead of for other products. Pretty slick - and SICK - isn't it? It's simple mark-up; no different from the drug trade on any street corner. Lawyers for the drug companies say "But it's perfectly legal! Why shouldn't we be able to sell our drugs in the most effective possible ways? It's up to the doctors to remain unbiased!" Lawyers for the states say "But this makes Medicaid and HMO co-pays higher! Our residents bear the burden! So give us millions of dollars so we can use it to pave our state's roads!" I say: I hope they knock each other out.
Shaking my head over the marketplace,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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