Case Study Of Pill Pushing: The Cancer Of The Healthcare System
Taylor Thomas
Pill Pushing: The Cancer of the Healthcare System The sorry state of our health care system is something most people today recognize. However, it can be difficult to see the fundamental flaws through the veil established through the haze of politics. We must realize that the core issues are much bigger than left versus right. The dire consequences of this system can be seen in many areas. At 15% of our GDP, we spend more on healthcare than any other country, yet we have the lowest life expectancy rate and one of the highest infant mortality rates out of the 12 most developed nations (Abramson 85). Today, we have a health care industry that profits more when people are sick than when they are healthy. The business model of the industry doesn’t focus on finding new cures and healing, but on creating paying customers. The pharmaceutical industry’s scope of power is huge. Their influence stretches into many different areas. One of the fundamental problems is their influence on our government. Big Pharma spends more on lobbying our leaders than any other industry except one. From 1997 to 2000, the industry spent $734M lobbying Congress and the executive branch (Barlett 69). They also contribute massive amounts of money to various political campaigns. As a matter of fact, in the last …show more content…
Although the physician may not recognize how the bottom line of the drug industry impacts the way he carries out his line of work, the influence the industry has on our medical system is monumental. The practice of ‘ghost writing’ is a great example of this. Ghost writing is when a drug company writes an article to promote a product or commercial message and pays an academic physician to attach his name to it. The industry-written article is then published in a medical journal with “no evidence of industry authorship” (Brody 459). In the words of Carl
Pill Pushing: The Cancer of the Healthcare System The sorry state of our health care system is something most people today recognize. However, it can be difficult to see the fundamental flaws through the veil established through the haze of politics. We must realize that the core issues are much bigger than left versus right. The dire consequences of this system can be seen in many areas. At 15% of our GDP, we spend more on healthcare than any other country, yet we have the lowest life expectancy rate and one of the highest infant mortality rates out of the 12 most developed nations (Abramson 85). Today, we have a health care industry that profits more when people are sick than when they are healthy. The business model of the industry doesn’t focus on finding new cures and healing, but on creating paying customers. The pharmaceutical industry’s scope of power is huge. Their influence stretches into many different areas. One of the fundamental problems is their influence on our government. Big Pharma spends more on lobbying our leaders than any other industry except one. From 1997 to 2000, the industry spent $734M lobbying Congress and the executive branch (Barlett 69). They also contribute massive amounts of money to various political campaigns. As a matter of fact, in the last …show more content…
Although the physician may not recognize how the bottom line of the drug industry impacts the way he carries out his line of work, the influence the industry has on our medical system is monumental. The practice of ‘ghost writing’ is a great example of this. Ghost writing is when a drug company writes an article to promote a product or commercial message and pays an academic physician to attach his name to it. The industry-written article is then published in a medical journal with “no evidence of industry authorship” (Brody 459). In the words of Carl