[mirthflat83]

This is so removed from reality to the point that it’s hilarious. Doctors evil. Doctors bad. Doctors corrupt. Doctors rich. That psychiatrist in the article sure must have been bribed to prescribe those 30-year-old drugs, right? There’s this thing called evidence-based medicine, go educate yourself.

[marcinzm]

I mean, there's a reason pharmaceutical companies in the US spend $20 billion a year marketing to physicians and it's not because it doesn't work. Doctors in the end are human and as capable of being influenced and biased and taking shortcuts as any other person. That doesn't mean they're evil, just human.

[conductr]

A big chunk of that $20B is on high cost ads to the general public, which doesn’t occur in many other parts of the world. It’s a backwards system when a patient is told to ask their doctor for a prescription to a medication by the company that manufactures said medication.

[marcinzm]

No, that $20 billion is ONLY for doctor marketing. There's an additional $10 billion on top of that spent on patient advertising/marketing.

edit: There's a whole industry around providing pharma companies better tools to influence doctors. I believe the industry name for this part of pharma companies is Medical Affairs so feel free to google the tooling being offered.

[overscore]

Yes, one of the few culture shocks when I lived in America was pharmaceutical advertising to the public. Another was constant political advertising on TV.

[jacobr1]

It is also a source of culture shock for Americans like me who visit friends and relatives that watch television. I mean, I watch netflix, but haven't ever had a cable subscription, and while I have a digital antena, I pretty much never use it. Visiting a home where the TV is on constantly is shocking, with all the ads and the viewpoints presented. It really shows how much the media fracturing is helping drive the political divide in the country too. I can't really imagine having those messages constantly pounded into my head.

[cestith]

Nobody has to be evil or bad to read the white papers presented by their vendors rather than doing independent research. A doctor's job is not to figure out the best possible treatment for each patient, as nice as that sounds. It's to improve the life enough of enough people given the time available. If four drugs are approximately equivalent don't blame your doctor if you get the one that's only 90% as effective in your particular case.