Antonio Morgado is a pharmaceutical sales rep's dream come true.
Morgado, an endocrinologist, sees 600 patients a month at Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen. He is among New Jersey's most prolific prescribers of top-selling drugs for diabetes, cholesterol and blood pressure, according to prescription data services.
Every weekday, a virtual army of sales reps -- mostly young women with eye-catching hair, makeup and wardrobes -- come calling with mugs and pens sporting company logos, piles of medical literature and armfuls of drug samples.
Morgado said he agrees to see the reps in exchange for a steady supply of samples, which he gives to patients who are poor or uninsured.
"It's difficult to practice medicine without the patients taking the appropriate medicine," Morgado said. "I tell them (sales reps) to give me the samples or I kick them out."
Interesting!
Samples ($16 billion's worth!) are the key.
"The free samples are what's opening the doors," said Alan Cassels, co-author of "Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients." He said drug makers influence prescribing decisions through "reciprocity," the tendency to want to give something back to the gift-giver.
Anything else?
He said sales tactics drugmakers practice today are harmless compared with before the industry adopted its code of ethics. Morgado recalled five years ago that a drugmaker offered him $15,000 to speak at a dinner on behalf of a drug he didn't prescribe. Morgado said he declined.
Morgado said he collects modest fees to speak at events sponsored by drugmakers, but draws the line at accompanying drug reps on visits to other doctors' offices -- an increasingly common sales practice.
"It makes you feel like a whore," he said.
Hmmm!
1 comment:
The nasty business practices are still there just in different forms. They are always changing them as they are discovered by wider public or exposed. It is like a sales rep. who charged a 3 piece suit on his expenses account. The boss tells him to do the report again. Once he sees the new report he says;"See this is good no suit in the expenses report". Rep. "Well it is there all right."
It would take a miracle to stop them. With all the $$ and political powerm we the public would have to come up with something special to clean up the big pharma. One way maybe to go after those corrupted docs who help them do it for their own advantages.
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