For the past two years, US Senator Chuck Grassley has pressed all 50 states to provide data on doctors who write huge numbers of prescriptions for specific drugs that are paid for by Medicaid programs. Why? There were reports indicating certain meds - widely used antipsychotics and the OxyContin painkiller - have sometimes been prescribed at unusually high rates.
The underlying concern over prescription drug abuse that leads to unnecessary costs and deaths. "Over prescription of these types of drugs strains the financial viability of the Medicaid and Medicare systems and threatens the health and well-being of the American people," Grassley said last month at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee Health Care Subcommittee.
The effort is an outgrowth of an earlier investigation into the financial interplay between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry. At issue has been the extent to which these relationships - which can take place in the form of research grants or fees for speaking and consulting - may unduly influence medical research and practice.
Initially, some states refused to comply with his demands. More recently, though, results have begun to trickle in and there are growing signs that some states are taking action against doctors who have been identified as high prescribers. For instance, Minnesota recently reported two physicians to its Board of Medical Practice for disciplinary action in connection with inappropriate prescribing (read here).
In Oregon, 67 prescribers, or 18 percent of 367 prescribers, were recently terminated from Medicaid contracts after a review of data from three years. State officials say most were due to business changes, but there were 15 specific prescribers who were terminated for loss of license, suspension or other disciplinary actions by the Oregon Medical Board (see this).
Simultaneously, Florida has been terminating contracts for high-prescribing docs to participate in its state Medicaid. The list was up to 10 physicians through January, according to documents provided to Grassley (look here, here, here and here). One also had his license suspended (read here).
And as ProPublica noted last fall, one doctor, Huberto Moreyo, was in demand as a speaker and consultant for several drugmakers (see this and this).
The same approach is also under way in Iowa, where the state Board of Medicine is reviewing top prescribers and the state Department of Human Services identified OxyContin and Xanax as among the drugs for which some physicians have written a large number of prescriptions (read this, this and this).
"While the responses from the states are still being received, many states are still reporting a selection of top ten providers that are prescribing at rates double or triple that of their peers," Grassley said in a recent statement about the ongoing probe. "While some of these outliers are legitimate providers working in high-volume practices, such as mental hospitals, many cannot be explained away."
He cited one example in which the top prescriber of antipsychotics in Nevada wrote nearly 6,800 prescriptions for these meds in 2010 and 2011, which was more than 10 times other top prescribers. And this one doc accounted for $2.75 million in payments from Medicaid. By contrast, no one doctor in Colorado wrote more than 2,000 prescriptions for the same drugs over the same period.
"Out-of-control pychiatric prescribing is analogous to cutting the brake lines on society. We've already seen crashes - witness school shootings, depleted Medicaid coffers, children saddled with ignorant labels such as ADHD. Putting the brakes on out of control psych prescribers is a good first step," says Ken Kramer, who has investigated high-prescribing doctors for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, which objects to psychotropic drugs.
108 Comments
Since Seroquel is generic now, why not use an image of the next lawsuit line up? Abilify is being rx'd (antipsychotic)the same way Seroquel was,over and above its call of "duty".
I know at least one doctor who likes to be spanked.
Good for Senator Grassley. He might be saving some federal dollars by cracking down but saving lives could be a side benefit!
Thank you Senator Grassley. Psychotropic drugs are a racket - not medicine. If people only read small print on these things!
“Out-of-control pychiatric prescribing is analogous to cutting the brake lines on society. We’ve already seen crashes - witness school shootings, depleted Medicaid coffers, children saddled with ignorant labels such as ADHD. Putting the brakes on out of control psych prescribers is a good first step,” says Ken Kramer" Huh? School shootings have been linked to "pychiatric" drug prescribing? Really?? Can someone explain to me how a prescriber would benefit from writing antipsychotics? I don't think these have street value nor are they sought by drug abusers. The branded ones do cost Medicaid (and therefore the Fed as its major funder). So this smells like mostly a money issue to me, at least from an antipsychotic perspective.
tedw,
Antipsychotics were traditionally reserved for the most so-called insane people in society. Depending on the class antipsychotics cause massive weight gain, diabetes, movement disorders, a slew of their own psychiatric side effects and per CATIE studies no more effect than the older drugs which were just as bad. Yes it's all about the money. And withdrawal from these drugs most definitely can cause violence just like the antidepressants. People will say that so and so went off their meds, were they ever violent before the meds?
I’d be happy to explain it to you tedw. Drug company payoffs. The more prescriptions written for antpsychotic drugs, the bigger the payoff. Search Propublica’s Dollar for Docs to get your feet wet. Seroquel for one is abused because it puts people out of their misery - puts them to sleep. Very popular with inmates. Certainly it’s a money issue. And yes, psychiatric drugs have been linked to school shootings. Some of your questions may be easily answered by google.
Tedw commented:
"I don’t think these have street value nor are they sought by drug abusers."
I think he is, unfortunately, mistaken. For evidence of street value, Google "antipsychotics + black market."
Readers interested in reducing overmedication with psych drugs are invited to send their e-mail adddress and name to:
psychmeds@youthlaw.org
In this day and age it's hard to see why anyone would question the link between school shootings and psychiatric drugs. Columbine shooter Eric Harris was on Luvox. Red Lake shooter Jeff Weise was on Prozac and his caregiver (aunt)stated she felt the Prozac was instrumental in her nephew killing all those people including his grandfather. I guess one could write a book listing all the mass murderers who were on antidepressants when they "snapped." As for how a doctor would benefit from writing a high number of prescriptions for antipsychotics, well could it be that he charges for an office visit each time he sees the patient and if he can run them through his office like patrons through a fast food restaurant, he makes lots of money. Let's not forget the drug company kickbacks like $1200.00 per hour to lecture other doctors on how great these drugs are. I know that in Michigan, Medicaid reimbursements for prescriptions for the antipsychotics Zyprexa, Seroquel, Ability, Risperdal and Geodon to kids 18 and under from 2000 through 2008 skyrocketed from just under 2 million dollars to 42 million dollars. That's a 2100% increase for prescribing drugs off-label to kids not generally FDA approved to be given such powerful drugs. Does that not take money away for treating people with life-threatening disease like cancer. Multiply this trend times all 52 states and you see a huge rip-off of Medicaid and Medicare. Unethical doctors prodded by greedy drug companies are going to kill the golden goose. When healthcare entitlement programs go broke (like some pension plans) then you will see laid-off doctors and nurses working at McDonalds and driving taxi cabs and wondering how that came to be. Duh!
Fantastic concise explanation Ernest!
tedw must have been living in a cave for the past 2 decades to not have heard how many of the school shooters were on psych drugs.
Hats off to Senator Grassley for his continued efforts on this important issue. Anyone who still thinks there is no link between antidepressants and violence is either really stupid, doesn't know how to read or has been in a coma for many years. The statistics speak for themselves. The psychiatric prescription train has been out of control for way too long. It's time to put on the brakes.
Thanks Evelyn. This hit home to me around 1992 when one of the first antidepressant-fueled school shootings happened not far from where I lived. A school teacher named Stephen Leith went on a shooting spree in a Chelsea, Michigan school. He killed the school superintendant and wounded others and is now doing life in a Michigan prison. He wrote from prison about how Prozac took him from an educated middle-class teacher to a convicted murderer serving a life sentence. If anyone wants a short personal tour of what is going on in the minds of these mass murderers while on drugs like Prozac, check out http://psychrights.org/Stories/StephenLeith.pdf Frankly (and I plead guilty to some speculation) but it would not surprise me to find out that the American soldier who just carried out the mass murders of innocent civilians in Afghanistan was taking some kind of antidepressant-antipsychotic cocktail of drugs. He certainly was a candidate to be on them. I believe about 30% of our active military is now on these and I have read that the most prescribed drug at the Veterans Administration right now is the antipsychotic Seroquel. Anyway, it is not too likely the military is going to admit that their soldier was on psychiatric drugs. IF that were the case, it would have to come from the family or a close friend of that soldier. There are so many mass murders where it already came out that the shooter was on psychiatric drugs. The social cost is much higher than Medicaid and Medicare merely going broke. But maybe that is what it will take for there to be enough public and media blowback on these greedy doctors and drug companies to rein in this epidemic of people being put on psychiatric drugs. It's pretty much big-pharma high-jacking any taxpayer funding of treatment. The next big cash-cow is Autistic kids. Watch them get put on profitable antipsychotic drugs in droves. The more money available to treat it, the more the drug companies will figure out a way to carve out a huge piece of the pie for themselves. Never mind if anyone is getting better or not. They just need an army of doctors willing to write the prescriptions.
from article, "...He cited one example in which the top prescriber of antipsychotics in Nevada wrote nearly 6,800 prescriptions for these meds in 2010 and 2011, which was more than 10 times other top prescribers. And this one doc accounted for $2.75 million in payments from Medicaid...."
A casino doc, probably....friend of Sheldon's?
And the down side of this is that MOST doctors are afraid to prescribe adequate doses of pain medication or anti-anxiety medication. Ordinary doctors are real easy to scare. And most are scared to death of the DEA and the narc's and the various anti-drug law-enforcement stuff, and the undercovers and all that. So while a SMALL PERCENTAGE of doc's run pill-mills, THE GREAT MAJORITY of doc's flatly refuse to write for xanax or the opiod pain meds. So their patients are left untreated or under-treated and in SEVERE DISTRESS. Some under-treated patients do turn to the pill-mills because there is no place else where they can get relief, or they take a chance and get their meds from relatives or friends and they pray somebody won't narc them out. THE "WAR ON DRUGS" REALLY REALLY REALLY SCREWS UP THE LEGITIMATE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE!!!!! AND DON'T BELIEVE THAT IT DOESN'T!!!!!!!
Hey Mailcat8 your comment doesn't jive with my 22 years of experience monitoring school, workplace, mall, church, university, police and military murder/suicides committed by people on psychiatric drugs. It doesn't jive with the 2100% increase I have seen in Michigan Medicaid prescribing of antipsychotics to kids who shouldn't even be on them. And it sure doesn't jive with the dozens of letters that I wrote to Michigan politicians and people who should be overseeing Medicaid and medical drug fraud only to have it all fall on deaf ears. I have never read even one blog, email, story or report of a single doctor who was afraid to prescribe a needed prescription to a patient for a drug that would benefit that patient. And if there is a war on drugs going on, you sure couldn't tell from the ever-increasing millions and millions of people who are put on dangerous, expensive and often unnecessary psychiatric drugs for life. In fact what I do see is drug companies not able to make enough of certain critical life-saving cancer drugs because they are so focused on producing maintenance drugs that people can be put on for the rest of their lives. So what world are you living in buddy!!!
ABS has it spot on, or as Headmaster Waters would say:
"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!"
High volume Medicaid prescribers are a top focus of pharma company sales reps, marketing departments and resources, they are considered a gold mine. I agree with Sen. Grassley, but he has a huge uphill battle.
Huge uphill battle? What great stuff came easy? Americans sure have gotten lazy. Might make a man's job easier if he was helped in this "huge uphill battle".
mailcat8, inadequately treated patients don't need to turn to pill mills. That is just a fast track to addiction. Best to get a referral to a pain management specialist who knows how to work with these drugs.
BTW, what is the biggest lie among junkees? "Oh, my doctor got me hooked on pain pills". Just another form of denial.
So encouraging to see the relevant comments from people like Ernest,tying together the human/social costs of these dangerous drugs with their dollar costs - money that is thus not available to treat real mental health conditions in real, non pill ways.
Turn on TV at 2 in the morning..."can't sleep? - take Seroquel". Open a women's magazine - "anti-depressant not working so well?- try adding this atypical antipsychotic to it...ask your doctor"...the drumbeat is relentless as pharma flogs these dangerous drugs to vulnerable populations.
The military is one of the worst offenders, often giving many days worth of combinations of psych drugs in polypharmacy cocktails to active duty soldiers going to the field for "just in case" - who knows how and when the soldiers take, trade, or sell what they get. Suicide is up in the military. What is the connection and how much is the military itself committed to a simplistic "pill" model of bogus mental health care versus a real treatment approach to problems?
The human toll found on such websites as SSRI Stories, which details news articles of homicides and suicides triggered by this drug class, is growing. When will our culture catch up to the truth, and the price?
Thanks you, Senator Grassley, for going to the heart of the matter. Would that your fellows in the Senate showed the same courage.
"The next big cash-cow is Autistic kids. Watch them get put on profitable antipsychotic drugs in droves. The more money available to treat it, the more the drug companies will figure out a way to carve out a huge piece of the pie for themselves. Never mind if anyone is getting better or not. They just need an army of doctors willing to write the prescriptions." since 1995 when risperdal was introduced as a "wonder drug", the autistic have been on it...i know was adult son was on it, risperdal almost killed him and under its influence almost killed me.
Whoever wanted to know how on earth doctors benefit from over-prescribing antipsychotics must not have ever heard of the King of Clozaril, the Seroquel cash cow doc for AstraZeneca Dr. REINSTEIN!
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2010/04/internal-documents-20-pages-of.html
Here's his handwritten note internal document stating the amounts he was paid by AZ, does $500K sound inspiring? Dollars for Docs anyone?
http://dida.library.ucsf.edu/pdf/iov09b10
Antipsychoyics are the "new" antidepressant market, with severe side effects and Seroquel alone had nearly 28,000 lawsuits for diabetes alone; which is STILL in litigation woes http://seroquellawsuitblog.blogspot.com/ where the plaintiffs wait and wait for compensation and law firms scrambled to try and attain the settlement threshold...still ongoing!
Antipsychotics are like a pharmaceutical cash cow steamroller running over victims on the way to the bank.
Van you are the man. You have this forced drugging of the military on the taxpayer's tab all figured out. It's all in the name of helping those poor soldiers suffering from PTSD. If only it were real help instead of a money-grubbing, betrayal of our military. I had heard soldiers were being given cocktails of antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs to take into the field "just in case" even though no mental disorder had been diagnosed. The psychs are thinking "Und now chentlemen vee half created zee supersoldier. He vill calmly go about zee business of simply killink zee enemy and feel no guilt." Well I think a lot of Pentagon psychs are guilty of treason. I don't support wars but if you have to fight one, it's better to win. Our drugged up troops are so busy killing themselves, their families and innocent civilians that America has already lost the Afghan war in the public's mind. But there will be years and years of Afghan War vets taking antidepressants and antipsychotics and committing suicide and dying in their sleep from heart failure caused by the antipsychotics. We're going to be worse off as a society than Russia was for many years after they lost their war in Afghanistan.
These drugas have yet to prove their long term usefulness, as articles in Newsweek and other magazines have said over the years. This is a good first step, but just a first step. A real thorough scientific evaluation by non pharmaceutical sources should be done of these drugs. Meanwhile, kudos to Sen. Grassley for his work.
Isabel, there is a growing body of evidence of common linkages between autism and schizophrenia. In fact, in his work on schizophrenia ("dementia praecox") Dr Emil Kraepelin includes autism among the five "a's" of the psychosis: anhedonia, autism, association defects, flat affect, and ambivalence.
Thus it is only natural to extend the use of antipsychotic drugs from schizophrenia to autism. Has nothing to do with drug marketing.
To: original industry insider - sir, it has everything to do with drug marketing. Your "growing body of evidence" is PR psycho speak, easily stated but non-existent.
Jennifer, here's a paper in a peer reviewed journal describing potential common abnormal biogenetic pathway for schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder. These guys were not PR flacks for the drug houses, as you might suggest. If you had a kid with autism would you reject a neuroleptc based on the argument that "it's just those drug companies again pushing these drugs on us again"? Explain that one to the siblings of your autistic son that you "taught those drug companies a lesson". Of course your son won't understand as he will have the mental functionality of a tortoise, but he will excel at parlor games such as counting cards in Vegas or memorizing the "A's" in the dictionary in less than 30 minutes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784305/
Original industry insider - the really sad part of this mess is that you (and your peers who review each others journals) have been practicing the psychiatric drug charade for so long you've actually started to believe it.
To original industry insider: "Peer reviewed" doesn't mean squat when the "peers" are psychiatrists" and drug oil saleman.
Original Industry Insider, Laraine and Jennifer are right. I wouldn't use a "Peer-reviewed" paper in psychiatry for fish wrap for fear it would contaminate the fish. The once trusted and respected New England Journal of Medicine has been exposed as little more than a clearinghouse for psychiatric opinion and highly criticized by its own former editor if I recall correctly. As to treating autistic kids with atypical antipsychotics your reasoning that kids left untreated will be good for nothing but parlor games and counting cards in Vegas is exactly the kind of scare tactic given to parents to force them to put their autistic children on these horrible drugs. Antipsychotics are a chemical straight-jacket and nothing more. They don't cure autism. They simply side-line a child from any meaningful interaction with the environment around them. That's why so many elderly people in nursing homes are put on Seroquel and Abilify. It is cheaper for the nursing home to drug seniors who are still ambulatory than to hire the staff to monitor them. So when your mother wants to visit my mother in the nursing home and wheels her wheel-chair out of her room and into another, the under-staffed and under-paid nursing home staff freak out. "Where's Mrs. Jones? That lady just won't stay in her room. Get Dr. Fraud to write her a scrip for Abilify." So now your mother is sitting in her wheelchair, staring into space in her room, unaware of what is going on around her and drooling down her gown and soiling herself. That's the product of putting seniors on antipsychotics. As for autistic kids, look for more news stories of autistic kids burning down their parents homes, killing family members of just quietly dying of heart failure or developing diabetes. And yes, I would rather have an autistic child who could count cards than one who simply stared into space. For years big pharma pushed Prozac onto us as the miracle drug. You had medical hacks writing books like "Listening to Prozac." Now Abilify commercials tell us "If you are one of the two thirds of people for whom an antidepressant alone doesn't resolve your depression, ask your doctor for Abilify." So now even big pharma admits that only one third of people on antidepressants are "helped". Actually, there are recent studies to show that antidepressants are no better than placebo, not counting the harmful side-effects and the cumulative social cost of course. No sir, antipsychotics given to autistic kids just takes available funds away that could be used for successful and helpful educational and behavioral training that really does help autistic kids. My wife monitors several autistic kids in school. The one on Abilify spends a lot of time drawing swasticas on paper and freaks out every time there is a fire-drill or any change in the daily school routine. It often take more than one school employee to deal with this kid. Another kid who the parents decided not to medicate is still autistic but he is happy and functional. I don't know whether he can count cards.
Yes, Ernest, I know the situation well. I just moved out of a town where I paid $20,000/year in property taxes, $10,000 of which went to education, much of that high priced special ed teachers like your wife. I moved to a town where the gifted children go to private schools. Let those parents pay $20K for those schools since I have no kids. I'll pay the $3000/year school tax for a lower standard of public education where there are fewer special education teachers and the retards mostly learn how to fix cars in Vo-Tech class.
Original industry insider - alas, your true colors shine through loud and clear.
Yes, Ernest, I know way too much. My good friends Stan and Shirley White lost two sons to the "War"....one was killed fighting in Iraq. The other was sent home with a PTSD label on a polypharmacy cocktail that included Seroquel...he died of sudden cardiac arrest in his sleep...this is a known side effect of Seroquel...google their names. 300 soldiers (so far) have been found dead in their beds...from these drugs.
So far, Senator Grassley hasn't looked into this, but with any luck, he will. A travesty of the first order.
Got to go. It's 10 minutes to Wapner.
Grassley ought to do an investigation of federal pork spending that dwarfs any amount he may uncover on drugs. But he won't go there.
@oii - didja hear the collective sigh of relief that went up when we heard you did not reproduce yourself?
I guess anyone not involved with *derivatives* is a retard? In which case, you might want to change the brake pads yourself, eh?
sorry, dz. I decided not to go in that direction after I nearly threw a piston rod after working on my engine.
Was a sweet car. A 1949 Buick Roadmaster. Straight 8. Fireball 8. Only 8,985 production models. Dad let me drive slow on the driveway. But not on Monday, definitely not on Monday.
Uh oh. Three minutes to Wapner.
Well I sure want to thank Senator Grassley and his staff for the fine work they are doing to expose and help put an end to the criminal schemes that drug companies and high-prescribing psychiatrists and too many greedy doctors are using to defraud Medicare and Medicaid. Drugging kids, seniors and now our military with dangerous antipsychotics is a greedy, coward's game. A Columbian drug-lord at least knows and admits he is selling a product that eventually kills people and he don't put three-year-olds on cocaine. Other than a psychiatrist, I don't think there is a much lower person than one who sells drugs knowing they cause harm. I don't know how the drug reps who spend their days pushing doctors to prescribe more and more psych drugs to kids seniors and the military can face themselves in the mirror each morning. A six-figure salary can sure pay for a lot of denial. I'm not talking about the honest reps selling safe, useful drugs in an ethical manner. Anyway, maybe I'll copy this thread and send it off to Senator Grassley and his staff so they can see that many Americans are very grateful for his work and the work of others like psychiatric fraud and abuse investigator Ken Kramer. Who knows, maybe the Senator will help expose the treasonous act of drugging our military. But we can all help spread the word. We all know someone in the military and its time more of them started sharing their psychiatric drug stories.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46885521/
Normal people being reluctant to kill someone else "in cold blood" was considered a problem by the military for a long time - of course they were looking for a way to get people to kill without conscious. Star Trek sci-fi series addressed the issue - the Dominion Empire created the Jen'Hadar....
I look forward to the day (again) where kids are allowed to be kids and grow up without the drugs. Parents don't always realize that those symptoms that they are getting diagnosed actually have a cause behind them that can be easily handled - nutrition, confusions in school, someone pushing their buttons regularly, etc. In every case, you can find and handle the why, without the drugs.
I think we have a bad case of 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' here. Yes antidepressants and antipsychotics are overprescribed and have many bad side effects. Yes some physicians get payoffs for prescribing them and this costs us money not just as taxpayers but also as purchasers of private insurance. That doesn't mean that these drugs create mass murderers from normal people. Someone disturbed enough to kill several people has often been identified as problematic and had some kind of intervention. If the intervention was a prescription with no oversight and no one monitoring their mental state, it's not surprising the drugs didn't help. But you can't conclude from that evidence that the drugs caused the problem.
Believes in Science, actually, you can conclude that in many cases of suicide and multiple murder/suicide that a person with no previous history of violence who starts taking antidepressants and who tells people or publishes on his or her Internet blog (as many do) that he is having horrific nightmares and violent thoughts, and who then goes out and obtains a gun or develops a plan to otherwise murder people by arson, vehicular homicide, knife, drowning, etc.--that the antidepressants are responsible. It is why the FDA mandates a Black Box Warning on each bottle of antidepressants stating these drugs cause these effects. If you need an insight into what goes through the mind of a person-turned-killer after getting on antidepressants check out http://psychrights.org/Stories/StephenLeith.pdf If you need to see one of the first published studies to conclude that antidepressants make people suicidal and violent check out "The American Journal of Psychiatry," February 1990, "Emergence of Intense Suicidal Preoccupation During Fluoxetine Treatment" authored by Dr. Martin H. Teicher,et al. "Six depressed patients free of recent serious suicidal ideation developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupation after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine [PROZAC] treatment. This state persisted for as little as 3 days to as long as 3 months after discontinuation of fluoxetine. None of these patients had ever experienced a similar state during treatment with any other psychotropic drug." So there's some science for you but I doubt that you're going to believe in it because it's not the "science" you're trying to sell here.
Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall of the offices of the hacks who are actually paid by drug companies to monitor Pharmalot and the like to put out their propaganda? Wow, that would make a good movie! I'd love to see their manual on how to handle internet posting. "Judge Wapner" comments would probably be found in the "we have no argument, but let's see if we can throw them off the subject" chapter.
Jennifer, why should we spend our hard earned money paying company hacks to monitor Pharmalot when we can do it ourselves for free?
Ernest: you have mashed together 2 different issues. Suicide is not homicide. Re Black Box warnings and suicide: Even before the advent of SSRI's and their (pharmacologic) children, it was a well-known phenomenon in psychiatry that when severely depressed patients became slightly less depressed they found the energy to kill themselves. Severely depressed persons and those on new medication require very close monitoring, as do those experiencing side effects. I wouldn't start someone on medication for diabetes without a lot of warnings and the ability to monitor their blood sugar. The idea that a drug is going to 'fix' a serious medical or mental health problem is ridiculous, but that doesn't mean there is no role for the drug in treating the illness. Regarding homicide, in the very story you reference, the psychiatrist wanted to STOP the person's drug and he refused! The real question is why the doctor didn't stop the medication anyway.
Believes in science, your comment about watching early recovering depressed patients for suicidal ideation is exactly what a competent psychiatrist would recommend. Which is why you should expect to be trashed as I have been, the veritable Darth Vader of the Evil Empire aka the Pharmaceutical Industry of America. Together with our willing accomplices, the American psychiatrists, we ply our drugs on the mentally compromised defenseless patients with unbounded avarice.
Our pockets are bottomless, and our greed knows no lmits.
Original Industry Insider - Competent psychiatrist is an oxymoron but you pretty much nailed it on the rest of your summary. The pharmaceutical industry of America is an evil empire comprised of unfeeling pushers like yourself and psychiatrists who have as much regard for human life as a vulture has for fresh road kill.
Other accomplices to the travesty include Congress and the Administration. They are well aware of the damage done, lives lost and shattered, and grieving families but choose to do nothing but levy ever larger fines on Big Pharm. Not one individual - and the names are known - has yet to be indicted for the clear crimes done for the sake of profit alone.
Laraine, to paraphrase my mentor DV, I fnd your lack of faith disturbing. You don't know the power of the dark side. The Pharmalot Pharma Hater Fan Club has taught you well. You have controlled your fear and released your anger.
In the final analysis, however we are the masters. There is no escape. Come to the dark side.
Original Industry Insider, it almost seems as if you are sampling the poison pills you promote. Your posts are a bit non sequiter and disjointed and certainly lack any kind of concern, feeling or humanity even for America. Do you find it disturbing that nearly 30% of our active military are on cocktails of psychiatric drugs while deployed in the field or that the recent mass murders of innocent Afghan civilians may well be due to the accused soldier being on such drugs? Does it concern you at all that this atrocity may well be the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of America losing Afghan support and losing the war in general. When you say, "we are the masters," I'm not sure anyone really connected to big pharma would admit to that or make such a post. You sound more like a patient to me.
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