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June 21st, 2016 
Awake Goy
Susanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Media Spokesperson, HEALTH MAX Group
Science has determined that cheap and free meals are all it takes for doctors to prescribe certain pharmaceuticals over others thanks to reps that offer this type of perk.
Following specific drugs such as AstraZeneca’s Crestor represented statin meds; Forest Laboratories’ Bystolic represented beta blockers; Daiichi Sankyo’s Benicar, ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers; and Pfizer’s Pristiq, SSRI and SNRI antidepressants; a team of researchers from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) analyzed data provided by the US Open Payments database and combined that with information from Medicare Part D.
Interestingly enough physicians who were given just “one industry-sponsored meal”, costing less than $20, were also more likely to prescribe that particular brand “at significantly higher rates” to their patients than other brands.
Adams Dudley, director of the of the Center for Healthcare Value at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF said : “Whether a formal dinner or a brief lunch in a doctor’s office, these encounters are an opportunity for drug company representatives to discuss products with physicians and their staff. The meals may influence physicians’ prescribing decisions.”
Shockingly just a slice of pizza would be enough for doctors “to feel like ‘Hey, I should let [this drug rep] talk to me’.”
This dinner-dating game is worth an estimated $73 billion annually; and pits brand-name drugs against cheaper, generic brands. The costs are passed down to the patient which is “not that medically bad”, according to the lead author of the study.
The researchers from the study wrote: “The differences persisted after controlling for prescribing volume and potential confounders such as physician specialty, practice setting, and demographic characteristics. Furthermore, the relationship was dose dependent, with additional meals and costlier meals associated with greater increases in prescribing of the promoted drug.”
PhRMA, the industry leader and lobby group, maintains that this practice provides “a valuable educational service” where doctors and drug reps can come together for a meal and bond, creating strong ties that result in decisions concerning medications that benefits the company manufacturing the drugs.
In addition to this exchange of meals for drug deals, earlier this year, ProPublica published a report that shows “doctors who receive payments from the medical industry do indeed tend to prescribe drugs differently than their colleagues who don’t.”
Using data from 2014 on “payments from pharmaceutical and medical device makers” and matching it with “corresponding data on doctors’ medication choices in Medicare’s prescription drug program”, ProPublica determined that “doctors who got money from drug and device makers—even just a meal– prescribed a higher percentage of brand-name drugs overall than doctors who didn’t.”
When a physician received an excess of $5,000 from drug companies, they prescribed the “highest brand-name” pharmaceuticals. This amounted to 30% of the doctors analyzed.
Doctors who took payments from the industry “and had above-average prescribing rates of brand-name drugs said they are acting in patients’ best interest.”
This practice benefits drug companies because “brand-name drugs typically cost more”; and creates an environment of variation depending on geo-location even though the problem is nationwide.
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