THE PLANK JULY 31, 2009
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The physician and writer Abraham Verghese makes a good point about physician-owned medical facilities--and what it will take to get rid of them:
As a
confession, in those days when we all had close
and cozy relationships with pharmaceutical companies, I took honoraria, spoke at conferences in beautiful resorts and
had many free lunches. Of course I
told myself, that all my professors and colleagues were doing it so it had to be OK; and I actually thought I could
certainly separate the free lunch from any tendency on my part to
prescribe a drug produced by that company. Looking back that was naive.What
brought about change was public scrutiny. Universities became hyper
aware and now of course we all treat pharma contact with great caution.
My point is, until public
sentiment, embarrassment and finally our good conscience kick in to
tell us something is wrong, we will keep dipping into that trough.I
think legislation needs to put an
end to doctors profiting on businesses to which they can funnel
patients--that is business not medicine. If you try to call it medicine
then it is corruption. Without legislation, it will keep happening.
I guess the question is, could this be done absent legislation? On the one hand, the cozy relationships between physicians and pharmaceutical companies changed, in part, because doctors themselves decided to change it, with grassroots movements like "No Free Lunch." On the other hand, it did take legislation--spurred, in part, by the grassroots movement--to make the change broad-based. You have to hope that some of the doctors currently profiting from physician-owned medical facilities will be shamed out of the practice of doing so. But then you read articles like this one in the NYT, about the fight these doctors are waging on the Hill to keep their golden goose, and you realize that some people are immune to embarrassment.
--Jason Zengerle
3 comments
From medicine to sports to the halls of Congress this sort of venality is now so deeply rooted in the American Experience one is hard pressed to come up with a list of things that are still not for sale.
Let's finally throw in the towel and acknowledge how the mercenary mentality is becoming so pervasive it's beyond caricature. One day every square inch of our lives will look like a NASCAR billboard
So, I guess I'll start doing my bit:
This post is brought to you by SONY laptop computers. I've been using mine for nearly two years now and not once has it ever functioned less than superbly.
So, do you mail me the check, or does it come directly from SONY?
george
- iambiguous
July 31, 2009 at 1:31pm
I had honoraria this morning. I think it was the pizza.
- jhildner
July 31, 2009 at 1:47pm
McAllen, Texas, the focal point of the New York Times story, was also ground zero for the big New Yorker article by Atul Gawande:
-- McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.
www.newyorker.com/.../090601fa_fact_gawande
- ndmackenzie
July 31, 2009 at 5:15pm