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It's always a bit of a heartbreak when a smaller team enters the big stage and just can't quite find that magic moment to pull off the upset. Do you guys think the gap between the giants and the newcomers is getting harder to bridge lately?
Medical students learn drugs by their generic names. Honestly, they don't even know the brand names until pharmaceutical reps start drilling them into their heads later in their careers. Take Azithromycin, for example—that’s just the generic term for Zithromax. If J&J manufactures it, it might be called one thing, but if Sandoz makes it, it becomes Azithromycin Sandoz, and so on, and so forth.
When a doctor stubbornly refuses to prescribe a medication by its generic name, it really makes me wonder: is there a secret deal going on with a specific pharma company? Why insist on one exact brand when others do the same job?
Regarding those Medicare guidelines about who qualifies for coverage based on a diagnosis—sure, they can seem nonsensical, but an insurance provider has every right to dictate how they spend their money. On the flip side, the patient always has the right to purchase the medication themselves. Doctors, whether they work in private practice or at a place like the Mayo Clinic, have to play by the rules of the insurance company paying their salaries. Period. That applies to everyone, from GPs to specialists. And why was vividsailor7 acting like he's some kind of medical deity above the rest of us? Look, vividsailor7, if you want to go solo, the private sector is wide open. Go try working for yourself starting from zero, and see if you can make what we—the taxpayers and the actual end-users of Medicare—pay you. Then you can act like a big shot. While you're at it, maybe look over the Medical Ethics Code before you write about your colleagues again. Remember, your words say more about you than anyone else. Oh, and pick up an American English grammar guide; it’s pretty embarrassing when someone with a high level of education writes with such poor literacy.
Ultimately, why should we pay premium prices just to line the pockets of one pharma giant when we could get the exact same thing from a cheaper manufacturer? Are we really going to wait until we're making emergency calls for some poor Nora or Ena? Why doesn't the US push harder to prioritize our own domestic companies, like J&J? (At this point, I'm not even sure who owns Belupo or Pfizer anymore.) Look at how other countries protect their local players like Krka.
Healthcare funding isn't a bottomless pit for people like vividsailor7 to play Santa Claus with, throwing money out the window only for it to end up helping Big Pharma fund fancy trips around the world to eat at five-star restaurants. Excuse me, I mean "attend educational conferences"...