Emerging data is showing that there is a continuing problem with the Chemotherapy Concession. A system which rewards medical oncologists for being pharmacists. The kaisernetwork.org's Daily Health Policy Report lists two recent New York Times articles that indicate this is precisely how chemotherapy drugs are being selected in the real world of cancer medicine. After the last seven years of investigating this myself, it doesn't really surprise me. But the lastest Times articles have surprised me!
Federal laws bar drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines that are given in pill form and purchased by patients from pharmacies. But companies can rebate part of the price that doctors pay for drugs which they dispense in their offices as part of treatment. Doctors receive the rebates after they buy the drugs from the companies. But they also receive reimbursement from Medicare or private insurers for the drugs, often at a markup over the doctors' purchase price.
And the revelation about pharmaceutical companies calculating to the penny the profits that doctors could make from their drugs and sales reps from those companies shaing those profit estimates with doctors and their staffs. This information comes from industry documents that have become public in a federal civil lawsuit against the drug makers. This documents show that representatives for the companies actually brought spreadsheets to oncologists' offices to show doctors how much they could make.
Let's take medical oncologists out of the retail pharmacy business and let them be doctors again.
http://www.kaisernetwork.org:80/dail...fm?DR_ID=45527
http://www.healthyskepticism.org/news/2007/Jun.php