How Drug Companies Spin Doctors; Americans pay up to 1000% more

[Deja Q]

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/drugs/how_drug_companies_spin_doctors.htm

Americans pay up to 1000% more to fill their prescriptions than consumers in other countries - that is an alarming statistic.

Between 2001 and 2011 drug spending growth will exceed total health spending growth
by almost 5% per year on average. (Health Affairs, March/April 2002).
State-administered Medicaid programs reported pharmaceutical expenditures annual increases for FY 2000
as follows: Arizona: 29.8%; Hawaii: 30.5%; Nevada: 29.6%; North Carolina: 29.4%; Oregon: 32.0%.
Data from HCFA-2082 Reports as compiled by CMSO.

The industry's semi-secret weapon is prescriber reports, weekly lists of every prescription written by each of the 600,000 doctors in the United States. Relatively few physicians know about prescriber reports, also known as prescriber profiles. But their existence makes it far more difficult to imagine that pharmaceutical marketing has no effect on the doctors it targets...

Article has more.

:wow: