Perks for Being a Doctor

According to Dr. Arnold Kassanoff, a doctor could receive a free diner any night for listening to a sales pitch from a drug company. The gifts are normally small, such as bags, pens, and meals for graduating medical school students, but some doctors practicing in the field of medicine for a while are lucky enough to get a paid vacation. What are the drug companies looking for in return? Drug companies want physicians to prescribe the company’s drug to their patients. Recently, the American Medical Association and U.S. drug manufacturers agreed to cut back on the extravagant gifts offered to doctors, although those were just words. Doctors are beginning to wonder about the long-term effect on his/her practice because of the gifts they are receiving from all these drug companies. In the United States, there are 88,000 drug salespeople for the 600,000 practicing doctors. According to Dr. Jerome Kasserir, the sales people are responsible for the increase in health care costs. The drug companies are always pushing new drugs and the most expensive drugs. Should the government step in and set-up some regulations against allowing drug companies to persuade doctors to use there drugs by offering them gifts? One doctor practicing medicine for 40 years, says that he is worried about the educaton the pharmaceutical manufacturers provide them.