60 Minutes piece on pharmaceutical industry (soul, America, service)

[Booko]

Did anyone see the 60 Minutes segment on the influence of the pharmaceutical lobby that was just on?

What did you think of it?

[doppelgänger]

Missed the 60 minutes piece, but I've been following this issue pretty closely for several years.

What issues did they cover?

[Booko]

I'm hoping some kind soul will toss it out on YouTube so I can link to it. Or maybe it shows up on the official website.

You could say I've been following it for years myself. I worked in healthcare industry software and for a pharma company, and now am studying for a healthcare profession where the healthcare establishment in this country will toss me in jail if I'm not careful about how I couch information people have known about for thousands of years.

Fortunately I'm not charging for services yet, so I still have my free speech.

I knew about the provision in the Medicare pharma bill that assured high profits for the pharma companies by making it illegal for Mediare to negotiate prices, just like other countries and the Vets Administration does. I knew pharma lobbyists wrote that 1000-page "bill."

What I did not know is to what lengths the leadership and those who are utter sellouts went to in order to ensure that bill was enacted.

[doppelgänger]

In addition to the Medicare prescription rip-off they orchestrated, their involvement with the FDA and the regulatory and approval process is incredibly alarming. Also Big Pharma's play to keep foreign manufactured pharmaceuticals out of the country is disturbing. And the pressure they put on doctors to prescribe whatever they still have a patent on . . . with well dressed sexy young reps buying them meals, vacations and other little gifts commensurate with the number of prescriptions the doctors write for whatever the most expensive drugs are at the time.

You've got to check out the blog of Dr. Peter Rost, former VP of marketing for Pfizer . . . and whistleblower . . .

http://peterrost.blogspot.com/

[Booko]

Yes, I've seen Peter Rost interviewed, and found him to be quite credible.

For a short spell I needed cash quick, and worked as a medical secretary (hey, ya gotta pay the bills and it's respectable work!), and I remember all too well the way the reps would schmooze us back office staff in order to weasel their way to a meeting with our surgeons.

Well, as we were working for surgical oncologists and not medical oncologists, our docs didn't think they had too much use for the reps. In fact, they cracked some pretty funny jokes about reps. This was 20 years ago, before they made a point of hiring cute women they way they do now. I know a couple of pharma reps, and yup -- cute women who are late 20s early 30s.

The thing is, other docs do have much more use for drugs, so would have more reason to talk to reps. And with the junkets and freebies the docs get from these companies, can we really wonder why we spend so much on meds?

It's funny that Australia was finding their med costs skyrocket. They made advertising illegal, and the costs went down again.

Advertising works. If it didn't, advertising would have ended long ago.

Are we interested solely in the profits of companies, or is there perhaps something of greater interest here, like efficient use of our hard-earned money and *gasp* working for the goal of improving people's health and lives?

[Booko]

Aha! Sure enough, the CBS website has the video clip of that 60 Minutes piece on the healthcare bill passed in the last Congress.

I highly recommend every American watch this, because it's important to know what our elected representatives are up to.

Click on the link for "Watch: Under the Influence"

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

I think the piece is around 8-10 minutes.

[powder21]

I saw the clip. So let me get this straight. If there's enough votes to defeat a bill, the people that want to pass it can get around that by leaving the vote open until they manage to get enough votes to pass it? What's the point of voting? And the fact that everybody who was instrumental in getting it passed left Congress for lucrative opportunities in the drug industry is just more proof of how corrupt our legislative process has become. I guess enough money can buy anything. Seriously, for the last several years I have had a real problem with the phrase: "I'm proud to be an American"