How Slick Consulting Firms Get Us on Drugs

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/01/how-slick-consulting-firms-get-us-on-drugs/
Date Written:  2019-08-01
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23735

A look at some of the techniques drug companies use to get doctors to prescribe their products.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

McKinsey advised Purdue Pharma to "turbocharge" OxyContin sales and use mail orders to bypass pharmacy scrutiny claims a Massachusetts lawsuit against the drug maker. Another state lawsuit accuses McKinsey of advising an opioid maker to "get more patients on higher doses of opioids" and study techniques "for keeping patients on opioids longer." We all know what happened....

Opioids are hardly the first time Pharma has used high level consulting firms to line its pockets and get millions on drugs. According to National Public Radio, Merck hired a consulting firm to whip up the fear of osteoporosis and therefore sales of its bone drug Fosamax by convincing medical practitioners to put bone density-measuring machines in their offices. The consulting firm also pushed through the federal Bone Mass Measurement Act which transferred the cost of bone scans onto Medicare and taxpayers....

Cozy relationships between doctors and sales reps create other unorthodox sales techniques. Court documents unsealed in South Carolina in 2009 show that Eli Lilly sales reps used golf bets to push Zyprexa; one doctor agreed to start new patients on Zyprexa "for each time a sales representative parred."