The Medical Thread: We're experts on everything else; why not?

[walrus]

My Gastro and and my GP, $398.00 and $200..00

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

I have to believe that despite improved awareness of the sordid history of Big Pharma's 'questionable' marketing ethics, the average has probably gone up quite a bit in the last 20-25 years. It's got to be very tempting to take all the free meals you can get when any decent med school now costs a quarter million to attend and graduate from.

 

[dxmnkd316]

You can look up what your doctor gets paid by pharmaceutical companies. The number should be close to 0 in my opinion. If you look me up, I think I have under $50 which I think came from a lunch I walked into as a fellow and my name got written down.

I delete every email any pharma rep sends me. I have brought a couple to tears when they approach me at conferences when I confront them on their company's bullshit.

If a colleague goes to a pharma dinner, I ask them why they cannot afford their own dinner on their salary.

Anyway, some physicians are like me. Most will do a little interaction that is likely not super harmful, but I still recommend avoiding it. The info you get from the pharma company can be accurate, but usually has a slant or is incomplete. I just tell them to point me to the peer reviewed article and that shuts them down fairly quick.

I didn’t know about this. Neat.

My brother has never accepted a penny and my primary has accepted $11.