Growing up, I lived next door to our county's most popular pediatrician. Each week, a truck from Coca-Cola would park in front of his house and unload crates of Cokes to his garage. No money was ever exchanged, but the whole neighborhood enjoyed Cokes. All he had to say was "Take two of these with some Coke and you'll be fine in a few days."
The incentives for doctors remain -- all kinds of freebies. But I'm not enough of an insider to say
money is exchanged. I doubt it. Maybe Dr. Loi can comment on Malaysian practices. I spent my career in the press, remember, and I'd love to have sniffed out a doctor taking money from a drug company. I would have put it on the front page and editorialized for legislation. It's blatantly unethical on its face.
In Florida, doctors were forced to separate from pharmacies, but a loophole allowed them to own hospitals. Isn't that special? They send a person to a hospital as surely as law enforcement jails a person, they determine how long the patient stays in their hospital and they determine which drugs the patient gets. They profit every step of the way. If their hospital profits are off, they just extend patient stays.
insurance pays most times -- the doctors say the stay was necessary.
It's detestable and a new law is needed to prevent any physician or group of physicians from owning any interest in hospitals, for the same reasons they can't own pharmacies.
Doctors do joke, by the way, about the number of ball point pens, etc., they are given by pharmaceutical representatives. But I think bells would sound somewhere if drug companies paid bribe money to doctors in any direct way. But I'll quickly admit I could be blind to this one ...
