Oncologists Raked In Money On Cancer Drugs

Call me naive, but I was shocked to see the New York Times article on how oncologists were making enormous sums on selling cancer drugs to patients:

Dr. Robert Geller, an oncologist who worked in private practice from 1996 to 2005 before leaving to join a biotechnology company, said that cancer doctors knew the profits they could make and in some cases would change treatment regimens or offer unnecessary care to make extra money.

A Bristol-Myers document that came into the public eye as part of a law suit shows that some doctors were making 65% of their revenue and net income from drugs. Representatives of the manufacturers would bring spreadsheets around to the doctors' offices to show how much they could make. And when Medicare changed its reimbursement approach, reducing these profits, doctors may have changed their treatment regimens to help make up the difference. Some doctors are blaming the way that Medicare reimburses doctors, but do they really think they bear no responsibility? Could it be that, following the previous Medicare guidelines, when they charged anywhere from a 20 to 100 percent markup on chemotherapy drugs in their offices and pocketed the profit they were putting business before humanity? When I was a young child, my pediatrician would literally make a house call in the snow if a kid had a potentially life-threatening condition because he had lost one of his own and never forgot it. I guess today many doctors would charge by the mile.

Cocaine Energy Drink Un-Shelved

Redux Beverages, makers of the energy drink Cocaine, is withdrawing the product from the market, at least until it can devise a new name and packaging, according to the New York Times. This is the sort of business story that makes you wonder what in the hell these people were thinking. Ah, yes, here's what they were thinking according to Clegg Ivey, a partner in the venture:

“Of course, we intended for Cocaine energy drink to be a legal alternative the same way that celibacy is an alternative to premarital sex,” Mr. Ivey said. “It’s not the same thing and no one thinks it is. Our product doesn’t have any cocaine in it. No one thinks that it does.”

“We like to think we have a great sense of humor,” he said. “And our market, primarily folks from ages 20 to 30, they love the ideas, they love the name, they love the whole campaign. These are not drug users.”

Sure they love the campaign. They probably also enjoy the red and white design of the can with the quasi-printed looking logo running vertically, a clear take-off on Coca-Cola. But, again, what in the hell were they thinking? Of course a business wants to make money, but people do have responsibilities beyond financial gain. Generating to the backslide of the collective mentality does no one any good in the long run. We've seen this recently in talk radio with Imus getting booted for racist remarks. There's plenty of criticism of the more destructive and misogynistic practicioners of hiphop and rap. We have so-called teen television channels pouring forth an alarming amount of sex, drugs, and other uncontrolled behavior, all to garner ratings and higher advertising prices. There should be some thiings that people are ashamed to do for money, and such activities are at the top of the list. By trading on sex or drugs, for example, they are simply legal forms of prostitution and drug dealing, except not as straightforward and honest.