Sales Reps Invade our Doctor's Offices

Author, 1978. Washington D.C.. "Little did I know at
this time, I would be loathing this organization a
few decades later." 

BigPharma 😡 #dvertising

Ask yourselves, why was it ever necessary for a pharmaceutical medicine company, to hire a salesperson, never mind tens of thousands to visit your MD's office?

Medicine never needs advertising, demand is expressed by patients, and met by the doctor.

The Opioid Crisis Reached Deadly proportions after #BigPharma #Advertising ran amok. NO PHARMA COMPANY ever had to promote medicine. 

WRITE ABOUT THAT, #LIBERAL #Journalists! PLEASE? 10's of 1000s of pharmaceutical sales people are fanning out right now, to every town in the USA. But the mainstream media NOW depends on their dollars to stay-afloat! 

Write the FDA and the FCC: no advertising of controlled substances must be allowed in public media. Like it used to be.

Addendum, 4/2015: Below is a letter I sent to the brand new customer contact form online at Middlesex Hospital's website, in 2010. I addressed it directly to the president and may have been one of the first letters to be received through the new interface. In the following year, at my very next visit to one of the hospital's associated Doctors' offices, I heard an interesting statement from a Nurse when someone else brought up the subject of free samples: "We're no longer allowed to see those pharmaceutical people in here anymore . . "  Later the president would learn more about who I was, on an unrelated healthcare matter and I can honestly state that today he would toss that electronic letter in the trash knowing it was from " . .that James Mason." I'm waiting for the Boat Show of Pharmaceuticals to come to Hartford. :-) 


Denial is strong when we are compelled by accessibility to depend on one hospital. No one will admit to living near a bad hospital, or even a hospital with a problem – that would be cause for community wide fear and distrust. That is why your hospital will never get the full truth from the great majority of your patients.

On Wednesday, December 15th, between of 11:05 a.m. and 11:20 a.m., I witnessed 5 sales representatives exit the building through the lobby of Middlesex Primary Care in Essex while I sat nauseous waiting to be seen. The door kept opening, the freezing air kept blowing in. A sales person seemed to be crossing the threshold every couple of minutes.

I felt like a second priority in that office. I thought that if one of these sales people has been sitting with my doctor for even one minute that might have been mine, then I was being ripped off by big faceless unaccountable corporations at my doctor’s office. Corporations so deep in competition they have to send out armies of young pill pushers with gifts to sit waiting in lobby chairs intended for patients. Is my doctor capable of researching his own drugs? Can he not make the decision to prescribe a medication based on his own qualified opinion? If my doctor’s practice has been tainted by the influence of corporate sales representatives, I should be entitled to know.

This letter represents an opportunity for Middlesex Hospital to live up to its own published policy. From your own web page titled Standards of Business Ethics and Conduct: “It should be remembered that the appearance of a conflict of interest may be just as damaging to the system’s reputation as a real conflict, and the appearance is often difficult for the individuals involved to discern.”

Most importantly I want to trust my doctor. When he gives me a prescription order I want to know he is behind it with his full confidence. I want to trust that he is not giving me a particular drug because its maker supplied him with pens and clipboards and passed him (under the table) tickets to Hawaii. I would also like know that the health care professionals treating me are not a bunch of sell-outs.

Last year by general agreement, arranged by a private standards company, with no consequences, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, not the people’s laws, issued an unenforceable edict that drug companies are no longer supposed to give influential gifts. But little has changed. Some pharmaceutical companies have ignored the new standards. And the rest of these companies have realized that a gift unseen is no gift at all, essentially fooling the public and hospital administrators.

I don’t bitch about something without having an answer to the problem. Here is a solution which can stop the conflict of interest, and the appearance of conflict of interest: Stop all daily sales representative traffic. Hold a monthly conference (like an indoor boat show) where sales representatives can swarm in with all their goodies like parachuters on D-day and have great access to the health care professionals of your hospital. Agree on one rule: for instance gifts to walk away with should be no larger than a football. Hospitals and health care products companies can collaborate to make this monthly event a great day. Convince the drug companies to foot the bill (it would really be in their interest). Lilly can set up a carousel for the children. Roche can hire a band. Glaxo Smith Kline can supply food, and etcetera. A fun day for all with unmatched corporate sales access that the patient does not have to see. Imagine the capitalism, United States corporations winning over clients because they have a better product than the other corporations. That sounds familiar.

The Manhattan Mosque Controversy

Time and again popular desires of the masses conflict with the constitution. Recent polling revealed that more then 60% of the public are in favor of stopping the Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan. If there is any question that Americans can be very ignorant it is exemplified by this controversy. The plan for a new mosque and community center in downtown Manhattan must go forth.

There are many right-wing Muslim haters that see the plan for the new community center in downtown Manhattan as an insult to a somehow sacred ground because the mosque is two blocks away from ground zero. There is also a new angry right-wing out there, which includes the new Tea Party faction. This angry new faction claims to honor the Constitution and thinks that the current government doesn’t follow the guidelines set forth in the Constitution. “Obey the Constitution,” the Tea Partier’s signs read. The mosque controversy will be resolved soon, and it’s allowance by local government will leave a bad constitutional taste in the mouths of the Muslim haters.

The first amendment to the United States Constitution is the most important amendment of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights. The two clauses in that amendment that speak to religion are as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . "

This is widely interpreted to mean that no governmental body is allowed to fund or intermingle with religious entities or interfere in any way with the free practice of religion. The Manhattan mosque and community center must be allowed and must remain as a matter of Constitutional principle that honors with freedom our great country.

As for the Muslim haters, keep in mind with 1.7 billion worshipers Islam is the second most popular religion in the world. The 9-11 hijackers and all of those jihadist Muslims that share their violent philosophy represent, at the most, less than .05% of Muslims. Hating and fearing all Muslims due to 9-11 is like blaming all Christians for the actions of Timothy McVeigh, a devout Christian murderer who destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building, or Eric Robert Rudolph the Christian abortion clinic bomber and murderer.

Our ignorance as a nation never ceases to amaze me.

A Liberal’s View on the Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

I should state here that because I am a liberal it is difficult to examine the differences between liberals and conservatives without being biased against conservatism, and I apologize for this almost inescapable context.

There are distinct differences between conservatives and liberals. Most of the behavioral differences seem to be philosophical in origin. The causes of particular behavioral traits can only be speculated. Parenting, environment, emotional life events and perhaps even the organization of the brain can all be contributors in the differences between liberals and conservatives.

As neurology relates to behavior U.C.L.A. has provided some evidence resulting from studies using magnetic resonance imaging, in conjunction with imaging, to observe levels of emotional response in subjects. From a New York Times Magazine article, 2007:

" our most compassionate (or even cowardly) feelings are as much a product of the brain as ''rational choice'' economic theory is. They just emanate from a different part of the brain -- most notably, the amygdala, the almond-shaped body that lies below the neocortex, in an older brain region sometimes called the limbic system. Studies of stroke victims, as well as scans of normal brains, have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy. . . . as The Times reported not long ago, a team of U.C.L.A. researchers analyzed the neural activity of Republicans and Democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous ''Daisy'' ad from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 campaign that ends with a mushroom cloud. Such brain activity indicates a kind of gut response, operating below the level of conscious control.”

That the amygdala reacts with greater compassion and fear in those identifying themselves as liberals makes some sense when considering liberals are known to be concerned with elements of society that may harm the vulnerable. In addition to empathy, fear of those elements can create a healthy drive to change the harmful. In this editorial I will focus only on the evident philosophical differences that can almost predict the behavior that would arise from these two frequently opposing and distinct personality traits.

Conservatives and liberals have a lot in common. Both hold family of great importance. Both have faith. Both are patriotic and want what they feel is best for their country. Both see hypocrisy in much of the actions of the other. Both feel the other is morally corrupt and each blames the other for what is wrong in society. Many liberals and conservatives accept as literal fact what they are told is true, often due to biased and selective news presentations on both sides helping to cement dichotomous views of the world. Both tend to exaggerate numbers in their favor. Both experience righteous indignation and can be zealot on an issue.

A conservative tendency is to value one's self, more so than he or she values others. On reflection at end one’s life, a liberal will be most satisfied or not, with the way that he has treated others and his family in his life time, the good that he has done for other people. A conservative will be most satisfied, or not, with what he has done for himself and his family in his lifetime.

A conservative wears rose colored glasses to see the past, forgetting the negatives and imagining a past society of Norman Rockwell appearance, of traditional conservative values where Donna Reed is a good housewife and Marcus Welby is the family doctor, where kids are good and wars winnable, and centralized government plays a minor role in the order of society. A liberal is likely to view the past with red flags that remind of poverty, sickness, inequality, and businesses run amok without regulation or labor laws.

A conservative is less likely to have an open mind when facing something new or something changing when preconceived judgments take priority over critical thinking and general intellectual curiosity. A good example of this is the David comparison. Suppose a liberal and a conservative are viewing Michael Angelo’s statue of David at the same time. The liberal is more likely to be impressed and intellectually satisfied with the nearly perfect depiction of the male human body. Quickly drawing on past lessons of shame and humility the conservative is instantly embarrassed at the full nudity before his eyes and would chose to hide David from the eyes of children.

Their differing views on entitlement programs such as food stamps are stark. A conservative will say “teach a man to catch fish and he'll fish for a life time. Give a man fish and he'll never learn to fish on his own.” While a liberal would say “teach a man to fish, but show him where the fish are and give him fish when he is without.”

Conservatives believe in “trickle down economics,” the socio economic hypothesis that tax breaks for the few wealthy will cause unselfish generous spending that will fall upon the many poor and provide jobs and happiness. Whereas a liberal subscribes to “a rising tide lifts all boats.” That providing more economic advantages (lower taxation) for the less affluent citizens benefits all – lifting all boats. This redistribution of wealth is a major point of contention between conservatives and liberals. The conservative believes that a wealthy person deserves every dime they have. Where the liberal sees that the poor have to spend every dime they have to survive.

There are foreign policy differences. While both sides exhibit patriotic behavior the conservative position in the world is jingoistic, arrogant, and proud and the good ole’ U.S. of A can do no wrong. Extravagant spending on the military is unquestioned and given priority in every budget. We have a spiritual manifest destiny guiding our place in the world because God has blessed our country above others less well-off then we are. When we act militarily we were right to do so. The U.N. is a socialist plot toward one world government. Immigrants take our jobs and are changing our way of life and we should close the borders completely. The liberal takes a more humility garnished pathway to foreign policy, realizing that we are one of many nations, one no more deserving than the other. Though a liberal is not shy about funding the military, a liberal leader is more likely to dispatch our military to end suffering such as genocide, starvation, or to keep peace. A liberal sees the U.N. as what it is intended to be, a peace orientated democratic body providing a neutral ground for nations of the Earth to settle differences.

Conservatives and liberals have distinctly differing views of what is justice and how it is hindered or progressed. Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed and want change and justice, even at risk of chaos. Conservatives speak for institutions and traditions and want order even at cost to those at the bottom. A liberal would be more likely than a conservative to come to the defense of the prosecuted or incarcerated. A liberal might argue that the founders of the United States wanted to place great emphasis on protecting the innocent from the tyranny of bad criminal justice, including unlawful incarceration. Conservatives continue to place greater importance on prosecution and increased incarceration than on the defense of the prosecuted.

Of course there are large and many governmental differences between the two dichotomous and alike thinking groups. Many conservatives will claim to be in favor of smaller governmental size and less governmental control over society to promote liberty and the general welfare. Some conservatives go so far to suggest that the government should only be in charge of the defense of the nation. While a liberal would more likely be more optimistic about the abilities of the people through government to promote liberty and the general welfare by a necessary and lawful amount of intervention into society.

Do liberals and conservatives need each other like night needs day, like ying needs yang? Just like a force needs an opposing force to define it’s properties, liberals and conservatives need each other to define each other when each is judging and evaluating the other.

Why a Fair Tax is Flat on it's Face

No matter your economic status when someone says the word “taxes” a few thoughts inevitably occur at the speed of light: “my money I’ll never see again,” followed by “it’s not fair” followed by “wouldn’t it be great if I could keep it all.”

Under current “Progressive” taxation, wealthier folks pay a greater percentage of their income to taxes (or a larger slice/fraction of their own pie) then the poor who pay a smaller slice of their pie and receive in turn the same level of government services. “Regressive” taxation works backwards from progressive taxation in that the poor pay the same slice of pie that the wealthy do, and the wealthy enjoy the same level of government services.

There has existed for more than a decade a proposal called the Fair Tax. It basically imagines a large “flat” sales tax on retail goods and services. The Fair Tax proposal says that instead of paying federal income taxes everyone should have to pay $23 out of every $100 at the state level, except (in progressive fashion) the poor, who earn less than or near the federally established poverty level, would get a monthly rebate which represents the personal value of their spending on needed goods.

The bait for support of the proposal is a plethora of goodies: it forecasts the elimination of all federal taxation, no more capital gains taxes, the end of tax shelters, closure of the IRS, a simple tax form, a repeal of the 16th amendment to the constitution. The proposal imagines that already in place state tax authorities would administer the Fair Tax. To emphasize simplicity one republican congressperson compared the size of a Fair Tax bill, which was initially 133 pages, to the 3 foot high stack of federal tax code currently in place which could be trashed under a Fair Tax.

Who favors the Fair Tax? The term "fair" is subjective, the name of the plan has been criticized as deceptive by liberals and claimed accurate by many conservatives. The proposal was first introduced in 1999 by Republicans, but the bill and several successive attempts have never made it out of committee. The newly organized right-wing group that call themselves the Tea Party favor the Fair Tax. Many of them listen to a conservative charismatic loud and sometimes obnoxious radio talk show host named Neil Boortz, who frequently touts the Fair Tax on the air nationwide, and has written a book called The Fair Tax Book. The website Fairtax.org states that the proposal has hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of supporters including less than 80 U.S. economists.

What is wrong with the Fair Tax? In a regressive manner struggling middle income families won’t have exemptions yet wont be wealthy either so their taxable slice of the pie will be the same as the wealthy. Even with the rebate exemption for the poor who are earning under or near the federally established poverty line, the question remains; is it fair that a middle income person pays the same slice of his or her pie as the wealthy person? The price of consumer goods will rise by 23%, the greatest rate of inflation ever known. This inflation will likely reduce the rate of national consumption. Luxury items will cost far more, motivating cheap-skate rich people to buy overseas and maybe even leave the country. State sales taxes will not be eliminated. The additional taxes can effectively raise the tax burden to 30% or more.

World wide, tax rules share one thing in common; they start out simple and end up complex. Exceptions are born slowly as new realizations of unfairness are discovered and brought to the attention of the governing bodies. Already the complexity of the Fair Tax proposal begins as exemptions pile-up. Beginning with the “prebate” for the poor. Then comes an exemption for families with children. Next, the middle income families feel cheated because they earn too much for monthly prebates and earn too little to be called wealthy. Next, since the Supreme Court now considers corporations persons, folks will begin to demand that they pay the Fair Tax as well. Then particular corporations will petition/lobby for tax exemptions, and get them.

They want to scrap the tax code, which is a very tempting piece of bait. But while they start over with a new tax system we all have to wait for them to learn their lesson and pile on exemptions to the point where our new tax system will look an awful lot like the old tax code.

One good way to think of the flat or “fair” tax is to realize that the same percentage to a rich person is not nearly as valuable as the same percentage to a poor or middle class person. Does that sound fair?

The Mad Haters Tea Party

When the simple folk rise up from political obscurity, be wary for they know not exactly what they want, but they do know what they hate. For the past couple of years the Tea Party out of the United States has been a confused and dissembled group of disenfranchised, disillusioned, economically frustrated, scared of change, narrowly informed, non critical thinking, religious and simplistic conservative bigots and very likely a smattering of racists.

In a measure of their naivety of complex issues and ignorance of how politics works, in a room of some 600 people at the recent Tea Party convention, nearly 80% raised their hands when asked if they “had never been into politics before.”

Mob: a large or disorderly crowd; especially one bent on riotous or destructive action.

The original tea party of 1773 were a mob of merchants and locals concerned with taxation by England without representation (or favor) of the local populace of the colonies. But it was not just tea taxes that upset the Massachusetts colonists; it was a build-up of tension brought about by the Stamp Act, the Townsend Acts, and the Boston massacre. The modern Tea Party is a mob made up of right-wing “pure” conservatives angry and hateful at taxation without representation (in Tea Party meaning: taxation without their support) and debt. But it is not just taxes and debt that upsets the modern day Tea Party, it is a build-up of tension brought about by years of watching liberalism and socialism take increasingly prominent positions in society. For an outlet of this tension the Tea Partiers have found scapegoats of programs and people with little ability to defend themselves within the media of the right-wing. Scapegoats like president Obama, government run anything (except for our military), infrastructure based earmarks by congresspersons, gun control laws, regulations of the “free market,” health care reform, welfare and entitlement programs, government overreach into the business of the states, same sex marriage, economic bailouts, abortion rights, RINOS (republican in name only), and religious restrictions by mandate of the U.S. constitution and it’s pesky separation of church and state.

“We believe in Limited Government, Free Speech, the 2nd Amendment, our Military, Secure Borders and our Country!” – Tea Party Nation web site

To the Tea Party “limited government” means that government should only protect us and keep us militarily secure from our enemies. They use a Thomas Jefferson quote to justify this ideal: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others,” (found on a Tea Party web site). Jefferson was speaking in generality of the purpose of United States government. “Injurious,” in this quotation does not only mean physical harm by a foreign military, but in all matters which could be injurious and in which government intervention, enforced through written law, can protect individuals from harm. Such government interventionist laws as making slavery illegal nationwide, workplace laws that protect the vitality and safety of the worker nationwide, civil rights laws that protect minorities and individuals from harm and unfair treatment nationwide, and business regulation which protects the populace from monopolization and unfair business practices across state borders.

“Free speech” in Tea Party nuance means that the religious should be able to express their faith through government entities like in a public school. Support for the 2nd amendment, means all gun control laws are unconstitutional (never mind that pesky Militia part). Support for the military is support for supreme United States power, empirical status and interventionism toward the favorite enemy of the moment. “Secure borders” is all about immigration, illegal and legal, and supporting English only in all government communications and in the schools especially. Their love of country is jingoism pure and simple (extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy).

The movement and the members of the Tea Party were indeed born yesterday. But their ideas are as old and as wrong as conservatism itself. From Birthers to Gun Nuts to Pro Lifers, the Tea Partyers revel in their own justification of their conservative ideals. Despite the successful history of U.S. style liberalism they are certain they are right. They have even made their own media to further cement their right thinking ways. They now live in a bubble of right-wing media. A comfortable place for a Tea Partier to be
.
The world we live in is not black and white and unfortunately we do not vote by jelly beans in jars labeled with issues as the Tea Partiers might wish. We vote on a huge sundry of modern issues, some complex and some simple, using representative democracy in a republic. And unfortunately for the Tea Partiers we do not live by the literal words of the U.S. constitution, we have a Supreme Court which relates our modern day problems to solutions offered under constitutional foundation – that is clearly how the founders thought it should be.

On United States Socialism

Afraid of socialism? It’s been here a long time. Somewhere between Capitalism and Communism lies the never fully achieved idea of Socialism. The United States is an experiment in combined socialism and capitalism, in a Republic using the tools provided through the practice of democracy.

In socialist fashion the citizens of the United States have collectively determined the need for publicly owned and operated entities such as the local police and fire departments, publicly owned and operated school systems, postal services, and even the military is socialist. All collectively created rules and regulations administered on businesses are socialist practices. All unions are practicing socialism. The shopping clubs are a socialist idea. Our collectively owned and maintained roads and highways are a socialist idea. Social Security is a socialist idea. Medicare and Medicaid is a socialist practice. Collective stock ownership is a socialist practice. So is progressive taxation because it strives toward equality in taxation.

A true conservative in the modern United States favors eliminating all rules and regulations on businesses, privatizing our school systems, tolling our roads and highways, enacting a flat tax system, fully privatizing medical delivery and leaving assistance to the poor entirely up to private charity. A true socialist democratic citizen is optimistic about our collective ability to solve problems after laissez-faire methods have failed; such is the case with health care reform and the rather socialist idea of a publicly owned and operated not-for-profit health insurance company.