Thanks for the anecdote, Tara!

Here's the opening graf of a recent New York Times piece on health.

Recently, I went to the drugstore to fill a prescription. Instead, I left with a costly lesson in health care economics.

At the checkout, I was surprised when the clerk billed me for $100 instead of my usual small co-payment. It was only then that I realized my doctor had traded me up to a costly branded migraine drug, even though the old drug had worked just fine. And I had allowed it.

This article has nothing to do with prescription data-mining. At least it thinks it doesn't. The writer seems blissfully unaware of drug reps, and their ability to find out every detail of a physician's prescribing habits. Hence the title of the article, "A Hurdle for Health Reform: Patients and Their Doctors".

But please, Ms. Tara Parker-Pope, tell us how your doctor made the decision to switch from the cheap generic to the expensive brand name? Why did she decide you needed a more expensive drug when the old one was working just fine?

Odds are, the pharmaceutical industry got to Ms. Parker-Pope's doctor somehow. A free lunch, a free mug, a few note pads at a medical conference. And suddenly the catchy brand name was stuck in her head.

Did this doctor think she was hurting anyone by switching to a "newer" and "better" medicine? Quite the opposite. And yet the doctor ended up saddling a poor underpaid NYT blogger with a fat co-pay she can't afford.

We doctors have to stop pretending that medicine and money aren't intertwined. And that free gifts from pharmaceutical reps don't affect us.