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Old 06-14-2007, 07:58 PM   #4
gdpawel
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Pennsylvania
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As per the one New York Times article, industry documents have emerged in a federal civil lawsuit to substantiate what you're saying. Big pharma calculating to the penny the profits that medical oncologists could make from their drugs, and sharing those profit estimates with those medical oncologists. And the other article examining how the new limits placed on those profits have made some oncologists search for new income, such as performing additional treatments that have the best reimbursements, whether or not the treatments benefit the patients.

As I said above, it's not that all medical oncologists are bad people. It's just that the system is rotten and still an impossible conflict of interest. However, some are still influenced by the whole state of affairs, possibly without even entirely admitting it. There are so many ways for humans to rationalize their behavior. Again, medical oncologists should be taken out of the retail pharmacy business and let them be doctors, like most other doctors are. Heaven forbid you need a gastroenterologist and they're are not many of them around because eight years ago Medicare cut their reimbursement for colonoscopies. How goes Medicare, so go the private insurers.

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