The San Francisco Examiner has published an investigative series on Medicare fraud. (The two articles are here and here.) The second summary article suggests that such fraud may be a far larger problem than has been heretofore documented.
Anecdotally, it cited a physician at a senior health whose patients started reporting incidents of potential fraud involving durable medical equipment. Despite her calls to Medicare and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2004, the case still has not been prosecuted.
Patrick Burns of Taxpayers Against Fraud, declared "There is so much fraud in the Medicare system that it is unbelievable. It is a tsunami of fraud. Yet we devote so little resources to it."
Malcolm Sparrow, from Harvard University, and author of License to Steal: How Fraud Bleeds America's Health Care System, said that the Medicare official estimate of fraud and abuse (a mere US $20 billion a year) is very low. Furthermore, he asserted that there are insufficient investigators and prosecutors to handle the problem.
Assistant US Attorney Connie Woodhead asserted, "Tell Congress to give us some help. There is a lot of crime, and relative to the amount of crime, not a lot of people to do the investigations."
My comments are that this just adds to our sense that there is far more mismanagement, unethical behavior, and outright crime in the health care system than many people realize. Such issues up to now have gotten little attention in the medical, health care and health policy literature. The civil authorities can address them, but clearly have insufficient resources. There is not yet any watchdog group within health care that patients, doctors, and other health care professionals can turn for help.
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The Damage of Legalized Lying
Amazingly, with the pharmaceutical industry, the amount spent by them on marketing is far greater than the amount spent on research and innovation, as it approaches 30 billion annually spent on their marketing efforts, as this presently takes priority over the research and development, so it seems. This includes 5 billion that is spent on drug reps, who implement the tactics of their marketing departments.
Marketing in some form exists with every business regardless of the industry of the business and its purpose. Essentially, marketing in itself is a complex activity- consisting of many specialty elements of various areas and levels, typically of an aggressive nature. However, with the pharmaceutical industry, marketing needs to become more specialized and altered due to the delicate nature of health care in order to prevent harm and ensure quality health care for all. Tactics that ignore such caution and consideration possibly could cause harm to patients in a number of ways, as this occurs presently. And recently, the marketing exposure of the drug industry has become an unfortunate issue for this industry for many reasons that remain a reality aside from what drug PR firms may try and tell us, as presently it seems as if the pharmaceutical industry, once viewed as very ethical, are now viewed as motivated by profit and greed. Such unwise and irresponsible methods include:
1. Advertising directly to the consumer. This method of bypassing what should entirely be decided by the heath care provider, as disregarding the determining factor of the heath care provider can possibly lead to inappropriate prescribing of certain advertised meds due to the demands of an unqualified patient who believed the content of such an advertisement that suggests that they are a candidate for a particular drug involved in the advertisement. Furthermore, it potentially removes the discretion of the provider regarding the best treatment for the patient through such frequent methods of marketing to potential consumers by such advertisements directly to consumers. Assessment of a patient by a health care provider is required and necessary, most believe, in order to determine the best treatment for a patient, as well as the provider considering their medical history as well as other variables necessary to consider the best course of the patient’s treatment. Ignoring this premise could be damaging to the patient seeking treatment through this possible inaccuracies through efforts provided by the marketing departments of drug companies.
2. Clinical evidence is the ultimate determining factor for treatment selection, after drug sample availability, and this evidence should be utilized by the provider entirely absent of any marketing technique implemented by a drug maker, which may include embellishments and lack of necessary evaluation of such patients. Analysis of such evidence is very necessary for the ultimate benefit of the patient.
3. People take issue with the use of celebrities who are paid greatly by some drug companies, possibly to attempt to expand or create a certain medical condition, so the celebrity will discuss a certain disease state determined by who paid such a celebrity. Many examples of this occurring have been noted by others, and can lead to both inappropriate prescribing and over-prescribing of these meds so often promoted to consumers. This may be appropriate if one is attempting to sell a car, but health care is more of an important topic of concern.
4. Education not only trough sponsored doctors of the drug company, but also statements from various medical groups sponsored as well by the industry for purposes of endorsement have been considered inappropriate for the welfare of public health through awareness techniques such as these methods initiated by marketing departments lacking thorough clinical evaluation that is necessarily for the best treatment of patients seeking care or concern of their health. As an ex seasoned big pharma drug rep, I can assure you that education is not the purpose of a pharmaceutical company.
5. The over-saturation of drug company sales reps who in the past have initiated questionable tactics upon the direction of their marketing department of their drug company employer, regardless of the validity or legality of such tactics that are normally not questioned or known by the drug reps in the first place. Such forms of manipulation include for some time questionable inducements for the health care providers. This is allowed to happen regardless of whether or not it is legal. As a result, many medical establishments are progressively prohibiting the activity or presence of drug reps at their locations. With the pharmaceutical company, sales reps are required by their employers to follow the direction of their marketing departments without exception. And the questioning of these directives is not tolerated by their employers. Because of this, the drug company’s image becomes more damaged as a result. To further illustrate this drug rep description, their employers require them to spend huge amounts of money annually to spend for doctors or to doctors that is void of any benefit for the patients.
In the past, the pharmaceutical industry was viewed as research-driven, innovative, and patient focused- entirely for the benefit of patient heath. This is why the industry was at a time viewed as an ethical one. Clearly, this is not the case today. Instead, many view this industry as one with their primary goal is to initiate market-driven profiteering, regardless of the attempts of the industry to convince the public otherwise, as stated previously by the industry’s supporters, who have attempted to place value to the medical community as the goal of the pharmaceutical company. So the view by the public of drug companies has been damaging to what should be a concerning degree because of their tactics and deception. So the pharma industry seems to be in great need of repair and re-evaluation of their purpose. This should performed by action instead of empty statements by the industry. It is the author’s opinion that actions by this industry for the sole benefit for the patients are displaced if they exist, unless my interpretation and perception are flawed greatly. The repair can only be done by the refocus of the industry towards convincing the public of the industry’s concern of their restoration of the patient’s health in several ways. One way is to always make the medical community aware and with conviction that their products are solely for the benefit of the patients, which is rarely discussed in full detail with such people. Fortunately, medications historically have been for this reason and are often necessary for the restoration or benefit of the health of those in medical need. The need should be more clearly defined by those who determine this, and these are the health care providers, who are caregivers, and not marketers. In summary, the medicines now available to us are for the benefit of the patients, and not the developers.
“Marketing is the act of making something seem better than it really is” --- Suso Banderas
Dan Abshear
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