We heard time and time again how Republicans believed everything should be between you and your doctor when it comes to healthcare. They don’t want the government in the decision making and they believe the information should be confidential. Well there was a bill passed under Bush and the Republican controlled Congress that lead to this:

When your doctor writes you a prescription, that’s just between you, your doctor and maybe your health insurance company — right?

Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are looking over the doctor’s shoulder to keep track of how many prescriptions for each drug the physician is writing.

By obtaining data from pharmacies and health insurers, the drug companies learn the prescribing habits of thousands of doctors. That information has become not just a powerful sales and marketing tool for the pharmaceutical industry but also a source of growing concern among some elected officials, healthcare advocates and legal authorities.

This information is used to help give ammo to the army of sales reps big pharma has. Instead of using the time old tested method of counting sales that the rest of the manufacturers use to figure up what product is hot or not, big pharma has to resort to tactics like this.

Have you ever sat in your doctor’s office waiting to be seen and in comes some nicely dressed person that looks like they should be a model? Most likely this is a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. These people are the literal sense of drug pushers, or drug lobbyists. They give the doctor all kinds of freebies in hopes that they will push their product. Next time you are in the examination room take a look at the posters or those models of things like the heart the doctor shows you, then look closer. You will see on it that its supplied from some drug company.

Health care reform should have included provisions to stop this practice. Kickbacks begin to trump actual health care and that is a prescription for a sicker nation. If big pharma didn’t have to spend all that money on making models, stands, posters and other knickknacks then the price of medication wouldn’t be sky high.