Banned In Boston? Two Docs Debate The Gift Ban
3 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 9th, 2008 // 8:27 am
As Massachusetts contemplates telling pharma that gifts to docs should be a no-no, a Boston TV station invites Danny Carlat, a psychiatrist and medical gadfly, and Tom Stossel, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to debate the ins and outs.
Stossel, who wrote critcized the proposed legislation in a recent editorial in The Boston Herald, calls the idea ‘draconian,’ and says ‘if I never see another Pfizer mug, I’m not going to worry about it.’ Carlat, meanwhile, says that ‘gifts is another word for bribes.’
Sam
I have stated this before - If you build a better mouse trap the world
will beat a path to your door. If you have a great drug that really
controls a medical condition, reps do not need to provide large
gifts/bribes.
Drug samples are great if the physician remembers to give them out.
I know from experience in a hospital that when a physician left the
area, the pharmacist would clean out his/her office of the samples
left in the office. Most of the time 80% of the samples had expired.
In most cases the drug rep “parrots” what the company wants the
physician to know and in many cases does not or is hesitant in
suppling negative information about the drug.
Tim
The video is not working - the commercial is working at the beginning but that is it.
M Helm, MD
Interesting video, though like most broadcast journalism left many questions unanswered due to the need to pay the rent (possibly with a drug ad?).
Makes me wonder if Dr. Stossel came on before or after the Biederman and Co. news. If the Psychiatry department can pull over $1 million for PhRMA friendly faculty, it makes one wonder about Dr. Stossel’s “funding.”
My experience - PhRMA advocates in the prescriber community do not come for free. Whoever the PR firm that prepped Stossel for television didn’t do a great job though. Sure he had more air time, but the “Mutt and Jeff” juxtaposition reminded me of Nixon and Kennedy.
Dan Carlat is correct about the conventions continuing to come to Boston. That talking point was more, rather transparent, fear-mongering. Funny though that no-one mentioned the recent study that showed patients who received “free” samples incurred subsequent higher health costs. If those higher health costs were reliably connected to better outcomes, no one would object to whatever marketing tactics could be used.
Sadly in pharmaceuticals, newer usually not better, but it always has a higher net present value for the industry.