Health Wellness

It does not matter which drug or medication you may need there are always drug companies are focused on your money not treating the condition you may have. It is good to be aware of these situations and make the best choice for you.

Drug companies in the United States are known for hiding where their actually spending comes from. Money for marketing is said to be quite a small percentage of the total revenue the companies earn, but a whole category of spending is left entirely out of the calculation. This twisting of facts and numbers is not a one-time occurrence, either. Bribery, lies and deceit abound in the pharmaceutical industry, at least in the US. A few examples will be outlined here, none of which have ever been known to occur in the country just north of the United States. The US’s northerly Canadian neighbour has a different method for delivering discount drugs to customers.

First of all, the price of prescription medications is pushed continually upward due to several factors. The first is that marketing dollars are far overspent. Television and magazine ads, doctor solicitation, medical journals and free samples to doctor offices are the four categories reported when it comes to spending for marketing purposes. Add to this the rounds of golf, free meals and medical conferences and you have a great deal of taxpayer dollars going toward the luxury of those who are supposed to delivering a deal to you. This does not even include pharmaceutical and physician meetings, which accounts for almost two-thirds of the total marketing amount spent by drug companies. This amount, by the way, is left out of the calculation.

Not only is far too much money being spent on advertising by US drug companies, they have actually been known to bribe doctors to prescribe their medications. A hormone treatment for prostate cancer by the name of Lupron began to experience competition from Zoladex, a drug treating the same condition. As a devious means of bribing doctors to prescribe Lupron over Zoladex, they inflated the price of a dose to $500 and sold the product to doctors for $350. Medicare pays the full $500, and doctors get to line their pockets with the leftover. In other words, taxpayer money provides a monetary incentive to doctors if they prescribe Lupron.

This is simply one example of corruption in the USA pharmaceutical realm. Since the government of the United States does not have price controls, drug companies are given the chance to continue raising prices to unfair levels. The reason for the lack of price control is supposed to be so a creative market can produce innovative drugs. However, clandestine activities have simply lead to an overall increase in prescription drug costs in the US.