All this talk of getting old
It's getting me down, my love
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown
This time I'm coming down
And I hope you're thinking of me
As you lay down on your side
Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse but I know I'll see your face again
“Have you asked your Doctor if new Miraclis is right for you?”
You’ve probably seen TV advertisements telling you about a wonder drug that will fix all your maladies, if you’d only let your GP know about it. Those commercials aren’t to inform you, or your GP. They’re Pharmaceutical companies outsourcing their sales function - to you.
Those free trips to Hawaii aren’t cheap, especially now that so many fabulous properties have been bought up by ATLAS aligned politicians. Why go to all the trouble of having to schmooze doctors so they’ll sell your drug, instead of the other guy’s, when you can put an advert on TV in a very affordable time slot? In no time at all you’ll have desperate patients demanding to be prescribed your new product.
I bet doctors love having patients come to see them who already have a prescription in mind. If you hired a plumber or a mechanic you’d probably leave the expert to it. Sure you’d tell them what the problem was but you’re hopefully not going to tell them what the solution is.
Doctor’s on the other, if the advertisements are to believed, aren’t very good at keeping up with research so it would be helpful if you, as their patient, could tell them which drug you need. The one being advertised, obviously.
By the way don’t ask your doctor for new “Miraclis”, I made it up. Well, I thought I had but it turns out to be the name of a face moisturiser with quite mixed reviews. For example here’s one of the many single-star reviews it received.
“Pretty certain this caused me to break out / have a reaction. I NEVER have skin break outs, however I noticed after using this continually that my skin was breaking after almost every application.”
Which is all very nice but the only reason I’m telling you this is because of the next line - “I finished the product hoping it would clear up/balance out but unfortunately it didn’t.” Sorry, what?
Ok, so to Seymour’s letter. Now as you’re no doubt aware when someone writes an Open Letter it’s not really aimed at the person it’s addressed to, it’s actually for the benefit of everyone else reading it who now knows they’ve been told, or asked - so now it’s on them. Which is a waffly way of saying that Seymour’s letter wasn’t aimed at Pharmac at all but squarely at consumers, or should I say - voters.
The first line in Heather’s article is, “The Associate Health Minister wants patients involved in Pharmac decision making.” So that’s interesting. I imagine the good folks at Pharmac, who were probably thinking having politicians sticking their oar in over which medications to fund was bad enough already, were delighted to see that.
“Seymour says patients often have different views on treatments that Pharmac may have not considered,” continues Heather.
Ahh the well informed public have views, that’s nice. Look I’m being flippant. I don’t doubt for a moment that Pharmac already receives plenty of advice from advocacy groups, it’s just that I’m not really sure opening it up to the floor is such a flash idea.
“I think it is important to factor in information that sometimes our patients have,” said the Associate Health Minister. Is it though? Don’t get me wrong, if someone needs a particular medication that is very important, and in a perfect world all of those needs would be met. But in the absence of unlimited finding having patients clamouring for the drugs that they personally need is no way to run Pharmac.
The organisation has a large budget, but not one so large that they can meet every demand. In my view the more that politicians, or patient proxies for pharmaceutical companies, enter the picture, reducing the role of those with clinical knowledge, the worse of patients will be.
It’s not like Seymour would’ve surveyed the public for what to do during Covid. There would’ve been no need, with the Business Round Table and the TaxHaters’ Union no doubt willing to provide all the guidance he needed when it came to health decisions.
Prior to the election one event set my warning bells clanging more than others. It wasn’t the unfunded tax cuts for landlords, the amputations of the public service, the attacks on te Tiriti, or all the other ghastly things we could see coming. It was an interview with Todd Stephenson. A man who had spent decades working overseas for big Pharma and was returning to NZ to be gifted a seat off the ACT party list.
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