Here’s a twist. Instead of Big Pharma hosting lavish dinners to sell expensive brand name medications, a health insurer is doing the same. Except it’s for pitching generics to physicians:
All the doctors had to do was show up, enjoy a free dinner at an elegant Rochester, New York, restaurant specializing in steaks and expensive wines, and pocket $100 on the way out the door. No, this wasn’t a big drugmaker showing largesse. Health insurers invited the docs to hear a pitch about the benefits of prescribing generics instead of pricier brand-name meds.
While I agree a financial incentive is needed to persuade doctors to increase prescriptions of generic drugs, hosting expensive dinners probably isn’t the right approach.
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- Pre-authorizations for generic medications
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{ 5 comments }
Just reinforces the old snakeoil salesman’s adage about more money in a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention.
Chuck Brooks
FutureWare SCG
If you do not approve of Big Pharma lavishing gifts and dinners on physicians to entice them to prescribe their products, then you should also not approve of this. Both deal with influencing physician prescribing habits.
Just because a drug is generic, doesn’t mean it is necessarily in the best interest of the patient. Not all generics are really all that cheap (the $4 list on Walmart is pretty scant), and since most patients deal with co-pays and not average wholesale price, patients may prefer to pay a few dollars more if a branded product works better, is easier to take, or has fewer side effects.
Big Pharma is now very restricted in these kind of programs (meals must be modest and they can not pay physicians to attend), and starting in January gifts (including pens) will be banned. The insurance companies have no such restrictions.
Big Pharma is interested in selling you pills to increase their profits. Big Insurance is interested in saving money to their increase profits. Is there really a difference here?
KEVIN, MD,
Two things to consider regarding your last point, “While I agree a financial incentive is needed to persuade doctors to increase prescriptions of generic drugs”,
First, your argument is contradictory: You are arguing for and against financial incentives in the same article (dinner = financial incentive).
Second, and more importantly, shouldn’t the question come back to what is best for the PATIENT, not whether it is a generic or brand name agent? Don’t you think that adding financial incentives to their well-being is money better spent?
Tom Brownlie
For most patients, prescribing a generic equivalent of a similar brand name drug or class effect is just as effective at a fraction of the cost.
Besides, a lot of what we do in medicine is worthless anyway. You can cure the HTN and diabetes just by getting off the couch. I read recently that exercise is twice as effective as metformin. Imagine how much better it is than Januvia or Starlix.
And exercise is free.
There is a much more serious problem. How will I get pens after 1 January? Where does one buy pens? Must we go 100% electronic and cease writing altogether?
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