The Doctors' Role

This week we have been looking at the extraordinary amount of deceit and greed in the healthcare industry. Today, we will look at more of that from a little different perspective of that of the role of the doctors.

The following is from an article by Dani Veracity published on July 7, 2005. The title is "Physicians and bribery: a closer look at this common medical practice".

In 2001, 2.8 billion prescriptions were filled in the United States for an average of 9.9 prescriptions per person. This statistic taken from Ultraprevention, by Drs. Mark Hyman and Mark Liponis, certainly supports their point that "drug industry prescriptions have gotten far out of hand." The overabundance of prescriptions isn't because of a rise in illnesses or the availability of new drugs that effectively and safely treat chronic diseases; rather, it is because of the corruption of mainstream medicine. The philanthropy that was once present in modern medicine has been replaced by a love of money, which gave rise to an elaborate system of bribery, conflict of interest and deception.

How does your doctor decide which medications to prescribe? Is the decision based on the first-hand testimonies of other patients? Is the decision made after a careful and thorough research of medical journals? Usually not. As Michael T. Murray explains in Natural Alternatives to Drugs, your doctor's decision has nothing to do with medicine: "Most physicians do not make decisions about which drug to use on the basis of scientific research or cost. They base their decision almost entirely on which drug is the most popular choice of their colleagues. What determines popularity? The effectiveness of the drug company's marketing and advertising efforts. In essence, doctors are often bribed or lied to so that they will prescribe certain medications." Bribery is a danger in any business sector. In medicine, bribes can prove downright deadly; nevertheless, they are shockingly common.

How would you like a bonus of $100,000 per year on top of your already outrageously high salary? Wow, that sounds like a dream, doesn't it? Well, for many doctors, obtaining a bonus of that amount is a reality. These days, the majority of doctors have dived right into the "deep waters of entrepreneurship, where there is always the danger of conflict of interest between patient care and making a buck," as Martin. L. Gross phrases it in The Medical Racket. Entrepreneurship has turned the medical industry into a giant game, where patients serve as the chips, their lives the bets, and jackpots are won by doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

At times, the bribes are obvious, such as when pharmaceutical companies send physicians on exotic vacations in exchange for listening to lectures about the companies' drugs for a few hours of the day, while the rest of the day is quite literally a day at the beach (or the golf course). The ways in which some hospitals bribe physicians are especially sickening, according to Professor Ann Blake Tracy in "Prozac: Panacea or Pandora": "Did you know that some hospitals offer special incentive deals that give doctors valuable gifts like fax machines and car phones, if they schedule surgeries when the hospitals are hurting for business?" Incentives belong in car dealerships, not in doctors' offices.

Sometimes the corruption is not as conspicuous; it could be a matter concerning conflicts of interest. "Conflicts of interest are institutional weeds. They take root below the surface and become pervasive problems often long before they show their ugliness," Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer quotes an "observer" as having stated in his book, On the Take. Now, what are these conflicts of interest, and are doctors really so susceptible? Dr. Kassirer asks a few questions in order to determine the severity of this subtle corruption: "Have the fees that physicians charge given them an incentive to bring patients back to their offices too often, or to order too many tests that aren't needed? Or have they skimped on tests if ordering too many shrinks their paycheck? Are they more inclined to order certain expensive drugs or promote certain products because of personal financial relations with some of the drug companies, contrary to patients' best interests?" The answer to all these questions is, unfortunately, yes, which signals the existence of a pervasive level of corruption.

Now you know why doctors' prescriptions follow trends and why the whole world seems to be on the same drug at the same time. Now you know why so few doctors prescribe alternative medicines for their patients: Nature doesn’t offer bribes.

One big question, however, remains unanswered: How can doctors accept these bribes and look in the mirror afterward? According to Dr. Kassirer, it's all a matter of self-deception: "Physicians know that pharmaceutical companies don't provide these services simply out of altruistic motives, yet they are eager to believe that they can preserve their integrity in the face of such bribes. How then, do they cope with the gross discrepancies between the knowledge that they are being bought and their need to believe that they cannot be bought? Disavowal probably explains much of the mechanism of self-deception. Whereas avowal is a capacity to identify one's true thoughts and motives, disavowal aids self-deception by evading these motives." In other words, corrupt doctors actively try not to question themselves about it, thereby perpetuating their state of self-deception.

Physicians may not overly concern themselves about the bribery they allow to take place, but we as consumers must. Gross asks, "What could be better than stopping the waste of $100 billion (at the very least) in medical, dental and pharmaceutical fraud, and using the money for any good purpose, including lower federal taxes for all? And in the process, cleansing the stain that dishonest doctors have cast on the profession and, by extension, on their honest colleagues?"

Ask yourself that same question. There is no downside to stopping medical corruption right here, right now.

Tomorrow, there is more of Dani Veracity's article and some professional sources that are cited. Stay tuned ...

Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous. Exodus 23:8 (NIV)

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Email: DeltaInspire@panama-vo.com