The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

As a physician, I guess I am one of the people who ought to be defensive about the expose' illustrated here. But I purchased the book already experiencing a good deal of abuse/shenanigans from the pharmaceutical industry, and wondering what else might be going on about which I might expand my knowledge.From many other excellent reviews here you will know this is a must read! As one reviewer noted, it reads like a novel.....so the fiction lovers out there can delve into its details as well as those of us looking for factual marketing, political and current events reading.Some additional notes: I'm a hospital-based anesthesiologist, and can assure readers that the tactics described herein are not limited to doctors' offices-type practices. This book does not address the techniques used by the industry to manipulate prices and costs within hospitals, but rest assured, the manipulations are there in a big way: limiting formularies, discontinuing effective and time-proven inexpensive drugs in favor of proprietary ones, marketing to non-physicians (accountants, CEO's) in a position to affect formulary decisions, etc.There is a singular, but major criticism of this book, and that is the author's conclusion that more government involvement is one solution to reign in the excesses of the industry. This comes after the text's superior review of how government (FDA, NIH, congress-of course) has, in fact, been a major player in creating/perpetuating the problem in the first place! What a preposterous conclusion/how contradictory can one get? After recognizing, say Ted Bundy as a serial killer, would she want him chaperoning her teenage girls, using identical logic?! How much failure on the part of the criminals in congress does it take to understand that consumers (grandmothers--see earlier review), not bureaucrats, are the solution to the "fix" here?IF YOU"RE A PHYSICIAN, this is necessarily mandatory reading. You've been hood-winked. More than that, your professional reputation and principles have been hijacked and perverted and you may very well have no clue as to the depths to which the industry has sunk to get its way at your expense. You will not practice the same after reading this book.