[kgrin]

Most of these are for chronic conditions, where people are seeing their doctor on a fairly regular (once every few months) basis. And yeah, at least some patients absolutely do ask, "hey, I heard about X, is that good for me?"

There are of course also the extreme cases of specifically asking for a given prescription, but like the parent mentioned, just having a few patients persistently ask the doc about X is enough of a motivator to get the doctor to pay [marginally] more attention to the doctor-facing literature/ads/sales force.