The State of Ethics in Healthcare

The State of Ethics in Healthcare : "More recently, we’ve learned these facts from mainstream news sources:
* Pharmaceutical companies have paid for and published studies in distinguished professional journals, but left out results that reflected poorly on their products.
* Drugs have been marketed as better than another brand when in fact there have been no head-to-head studies.
* Major pharmaceutical distributors have bought drugs through middle men and, though they have been unable to determine the authenticity of the products, re-sold them.
* Medical device manufacturers have knowingly distributed products with fatal flaws.
* Medical device manufacturers have paid exorbitant “consulting” fees to surgeons who decide which products their hospitals will buy for implantation into patients.
* Many health plans have profited not by managing care, but by ratcheting down rates to doctors and hospitals and forcing employers to pay ever higher premiums.
* Many hospitals have illegally paid doctors to increase admissions at their facilities.
* Nonprofit hospitals, supposedly mission-driven, have charged uninsured patients three to four times what insurance companies pay, then sued them when they couldn’t pay.
* Many doctors practice medicine based on their own beliefs, feel that evidence-based medicine is too “cookbook,” and often prescribe procedures based more on financial self-interest than clinical necessity.
* Many doctors, hospitals and other providers have consistently and, with little fear of penalty, stolen from Medicaid and Medicare.
* Doctors often relent when patients pressure them to provide unnecessary services, even when the physicians know the procedures are inappropriate and costly.
* Some “disease advocacy” associations--patients with the disease in question often look to them for unbiased advice--accept large contributions from drug companies, and then do not fully disclose details about their sponsors’ contributions or their drugs’ impacts.
* Healthcare corporations invest in lobbying because it works, spinning public policy and dollars disproportionately in favor of healthcare’s strongest interests.
* Many healthcare executive have enjoyed extraordinary compensation while fraud and abuse occurs, and is even encouraged under their watch."
I find it depressing that it's such a long list - and it's not even comprehensive !