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Comment by gklitz | Hacker News Reader

> This reminds me of my mom in medical school who became disillusioned when she experienced the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry and it's influence of the entire industry for it's own profit, not always in the interest of the patient.

That sounds like a story of its own. Would you care to share the story about the corruption she saw? We so often hear the stories about companies hiking prices for lifesaving medicine fo no apparent reason other than profit, but it would be interesting to hear what she saw from the inside?

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Someone who's in medical school (or finishes and goes into medicine) isn't really "inside" the pharmaceutical industry and typically has a very, very poor understanding of how pharmaceuticals are developed and brought to market.

The most substantial corruption in the health/life sciences/medicine world is simple profit motive at hospitals, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and insurers, and especially when those three entities combine into mega "pay-vidors" like UHG.

Tiny anecdote: I worked on the campus of a children's hospital. The pharma reps had parking right by the main entrance. The parents of sick children? Expensive, paid parking a mile away.

Here's a fun one that just happened recently. A doctor I know works for a giant conglomerate as a general practitioner. Recently the business development team realized that insurance will pay them to take pee samples for diabetes tests for every patient. Now every single time someone comes in the medical assistants are made to get a piss sample for a test that is totally worthless for most of these people as they have little risk of diabetes(far high chance of false positive than true positive). When the doctor told the medical assistants to stop he received an angry email from an MBA which became a huge pain in the ass. At the end of the day we have to remember that the only goal of a business is to make money and even if everyone inside that business is trying to do good the banality of evil tends to rear its ugly face. The MBA actually believed the policy was helping people here believe it or not.

Personal financial payments to physicians are a common marketing strategy used by the pharmaceutical industry. These payments include both cash (typically for consulting services or invited lectures) and in-kind gifts such as meals.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8315858/#:~:text=Pe....

The pharma and medical device companies sponsor the conferences that all our doctors attend every year.

Also trips to medical conferences abroad, at least in Europe.

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