Pharmaceutical Companies are taking YOUR money!!

This talk of drug reps and the insinuation of need of market through our practice is certainly worthwhile, but a larger view of the sinister role of the pharmaceutical corporations to the greater nursing issues is relevant.
We as nurses suffered cut backs and give backs for a decade [only recently adjusted, and this adjustment is delayed and inadequate]. Through the period of nationally experienced cut backs and give backs we were told "there is no money" from our individual hospital employers, and this was echoed through the media driving the larger point home. Many factors, all of them complex, were involved.

Still the basic premise is simple. Hospital budgets are finite Individually,hospital budgets must be viewed as budget pies. Cost has been, and is, allocated [by wage for labour resources, and cost for non labour resources] to the pieces forming the pie's whole.Nurses represent 70 some percent of the labour resource cost piece of the pie for any hospital. Pharmaceuticals receive a far larger piece of any hospital pie, and this without cut back, or give back. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry prospered during our own [most recent] period of decay.
During the decade of 1992 to 2002, those of us remaining in the profession exhibited patience for the changing nature regarding all the pieces, including the [suggested unrealistic] demands of our own, and we were made to understand the need of hospital management to cut the pie pieces back according to many complex issues often beyond our understanding and certainly beyond the discussion of all pieces offered us in our individual hospitals.
This is the point: our direct and most powerful, sinister, and influential competitor to the pie is the Pharmaceutical Industry.Pharmaceutical Lobbyists are powerful, and they exert considerable strain on the Healthcare Industry- thus adversely affecting nurses and serving as our competitor to the pie. Their portion of the hospital pie is necessary, but it is exorbitant, and fueled by greed and the willingness to undermine the greater health care sector of which it is part. The exorbitant profit margins expressed in stock viability and value rose remarkably, even obscenely, while our own wages decreased with our own complacency. To fuel the extreme cost of drug development, the cost of drugs must be exercised. But this necessary truth is exercised beyond reasonable need.
This is an area in which nurses MUST relinquish an adversarial relationship and join with the hospitals which are their [predominant] employers; Nurse advocacy and lobbying groups must exert their influence while hospital management and their lobbying groups also exert influence to same end.
The combined effect upon the phamaceutical industry could be the forum where both Nurses and The Industry Leaders reach unprecedented common ground yielding significant common good beyond their own environment and encompassing the larger community of the patients they serve. Demand to understand the pieces of the pie at your OWN hospital in order to realistically state the approriate steps required to assure that Nursing's pice of the pie is not diminished by a greedy, even glutonous competitor willing to sacrifice a nursing's piece of the pie, and the solvency of the hospitals they stock. . All hospitals, all nurses must join to this end.

"In this pantheon of corporate muscle, no industry wields as much power as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), a pressure group breathtaking for its deep pockets and aggression, even by the standards of US politics...The combined worth of the world's top five drug companies is twice the combined GDP of all sub-Saharan Africa and their influence on the
rules of world trade is many times stronger because they can bring their wealth to bear directly on the levers of western power. ....The pharmaceutical industry is therefore well-placed to defend profits which have soared in recent years to 36% (measured as a return on equity). That rate of return on investment is more than twice the US average. It is far and away the most profitable major industry in the country. 'The Pharmaceutical Industry Stalks the Corridors of Power' By Julian Borger. Printed in The Guardian Unlimited. February 13, 2001 "http://www.nebhworker.org/archive/pharmaceutical.html

Bill Maher had a great joke that went something like "When you tell your doctor what medication you need instead of the other way around, he's not a doctor, he's a pusher". Now, I know that's kind of mean and unfair, but it's also a wickedly funny concept.

Somebody is taking action - interesting article....

!Artilce about consumer group suing drug company over prices....


and I agree wholeheartedly about the free market comments - if drugs were a free market, people whould be able to choose if they wanted to take them or not, rather than have their quality of life or even life itself held ransom.

Pharmaceuticals are in no way shape or form a "Free" market

VERY interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

I was an Orthopaedic Sales Rep for almost a decade before finally burning out and returning to school. I am in CNA training now and hope to get into an ADN program in 2009. The changes at least in the Ortho community was striking over that time. When I first started it was all wine and dine the Docs. Also, Surgeons were paid sometimes huge consulting fees, just to use a certain product. (None of mine though, I never felt it was right and refused to deal with surgeons who demanded it and some did!!!!) 2 years ago the government shut all that down (Thankfully!). The Ortho companies paid huge fine as punishment for trying to influence decisions the surgeons made. So hopefully there will be less of this type of abuse.

1 thing that may not be fully understood is the difference between drug reps and surgical reps. Drug reps are mostly company employees and admittedly by some " Paid advertisments in the clinic" (quoted from a former Pharma manager I know!) I was an independent rep who covered my own expenses and actually brought alot of clinincal experience to the Doc. If there was a better product to fix a fracture sold by my competitors I would be the first to suggest it. In my experience I was not alone amoung my peers doing this. For me at least it was about the patient and the outcome. I figured the income would come if I focused on what was important. It worked out well for along time til the end when circumstances beyond my control destroyed my business. Oh well. I am going to nursing schools because I have always focused on the patient and want to take it to the next level. It has been so fascinating for me to see the post op results of the procedures I was a part of even as a CNA in clinicals.

I hope this adds a little diferent perspective on the situation. As for the pens and post its and such.... for me they all came out of my pocket. The company paid nothing for them in my situation. I bought them at cost from the company primarily because I knew the nurses and techs appreciated them so much. Again, I am certainly not speaking for Pharma companies. Just my situation.

LOL I posted this and then realized the last post was 2003. That was pre Advamed . The Pharma and Ortho companies have chanfged the way they work quite a bit. I was just reading back posts on the joke forum and ran into the discussion there. It was along day at clinicals and I needed a laugh. Sorry for rehashing something obviously a bit dated LOL