Those free samples your doctor gives when youre sick are a symptom
of an amoral market-based health care system, argues a
left-leaning doctor. But to the crew of CNNs In the Money, Dr.
Jerome Kassirer of Tufts University is just a concerned doctor
trying to improve the quality of medicine in America, even though
hes a liberal critic of private health care and, according to the
Federal Election Commission, donated to the Howard Dean and Sen. Ted
Kennedy (D-Mass.) campaigns.
Feel like you see a drug ad every time you turn on the TV? Well
consider this, only about 10 percent of pharmaceutical marketing
dollars go to advertising according to our next guest, teased In
the Money co-host Jennifer Westhoven on the February 18 program,
adding that the other 90 percent goes to wining and dining doctors,
according to Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of
Medicine.
The In the Money crew didnt question Kassirer on his
calculations, including how his numbers ignore the almost $40
billion invested in research and development in 2005, according to a
press release by the trade group
Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
Also, numbers released by PhRMA in 2004 showed that in 2003, the
amount spent on direct-to-consumer advertising by its members was
only one-tenth of that spent on research and development. As the
Free
Market Project has reported,
the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department have
concluded that direct-to-consumer advertising does not increase
inappropriate prescriptions for drugs.
The CNN money mavens also let the Tufts professor off easily when he
attacked drug companies for giving doctors free samples for patients
something one would expect liberals and conservatives alike to
embrace, given frequent complaints about the cost of medicine. But
in responding to co-host Jack Caffertys posed scenario involving a
poor patient given a 10-day supply of antibiotics by his doctor,
Kassirer replied that the problem was that any time you use those
free samples, then the doctor gets used to using that particular
drug and that raises the cost of care. Kassirer wasnt questioned
on exactly how that raised costs.
CNNs business crew left out that Kassirer has long been a proponent
of socialized medicine and a critic of market-based reforms for
health care. Kassirer, then-editor-in-chief of
The New England Journal of Medicine, wrote in the
July 6, 1995, edition:
Our leaders should reject market values as a framework for health
care and the market-driven mess into which our health system is
evolving. We gave up too easily; we must make another serious
attempt to formulate a national policy that will provide health care
to all. That was one year after the defeat of a socialized medicine
plan championed by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
In a January 2000 speech, Kassirer who according to the
Federal Election Commission donated $500 to the Howard Dean
presidential race in 2003 and $1,000 to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
in 2004
complained that Never in the 2000 years of medicine did our ethical constructs
envision a market-driven health care system This amoral system
often requires physicians to serve two masters: their patients and
their employers.
The
Business & Media Institute has previously covered how the media have
given left-leaning organizations a wide berth to distort health care
issues while frequently
attacking the prescription drug industry.
CNN Prescribes an End to Free Medicine Samples
February 20th, 2006 2:00 PM
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