From Kaiser Health News, Harris Meyer reports, “Under Health Law, Colonoscopies Are Free–But It Doesn’t Always Work That Way .” It’s another quirk in the Affordable Care Act. (A bigger one, which continues to evade much public scrutiny, is how coverage is based on recommendations of the US Preventive Services Task Force – all EXCEPT the 2009 mammography recommendations which were back-burnered for – you name it – political…special interest…lobbying…widespread miscommunication reasons.)
And in the New York Times, Natalie Singer reports on “A Fight Over How Drugs Are Pitched,” about the Supreme Court hearing arguments this week on a case testing whether Vermont’s prescription confidentiality law violates the free speech protections of the First Amendment. She begins the story:
“Before pharmaceutical company marketers call on a doctor, they do their homework. These salespeople typically pore over electronic profiles bought from data brokers, dossiers that detail the brands and amounts of drugs a particular doctor has prescribed. It is a marketing practice that some health care professionals have come to hate.
“It’s very powerful data and it’s easy to understand why drug companies want it,” said Dr. Norman S. Ward, a family physician in Burlington, Vt. “If they know the prescribing patterns of physicians, it could be very powerful information in trying to sway their behavior — like, why are you prescribing a lot of my competitor’s drug and not mine?”
Marketing to doctors using prescription records bearing their names is an increasingly contentious practice, with three states, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, in the vanguard of enacting laws to limit the uses of a doctor’s prescription records for marketing.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Many of the principles that we promoted to journalists and to the general public from 2006-18 are embodied in this terrific project based in Oslo. https://t.co/KO1o9JTYK7
Following a shift in journalism’s business model, a diverse ecosystem of publications, many covering science, has sprung up online. This has made it more difficult to sort out what qualifies as journalism, what doesn’t, and whether the public even cares.
https://t.co/qO2a27FiSe
Researchers and journalists do the public a grave disservice when they spin health study results to make them appear safer or more effective than warranted, says @HealthNewsRevu founder @garyschwitzer https://t.co/QIKsRbP6Ed
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Chris
April 25, 2011 at 6:39 pmre: colonoscopies.
A rare case where unbundling might be a good thing. Of course you’d have to create the HCPCS code.
Free care always has its problems and I’m not convinced how much it improves compliance.
Now if YOU PAID ME 50 BUCKS TO STICK THAT THING UP MY…
Well you get the idea
Michael Kirsch, MD
April 28, 2011 at 6:45 amSure, we physicians loathe that the pharm reps have profiled our ‘scripts, and they won’t talk to us about it (until they quit the company). I expect that the Supremes will deem this to be legal and that the process will continue.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like