If a doctor can prescribe drugs, why can't he just sell you the drugs so you don't have to go to a pharmacy? I think it's so inconvenient to have to go to a pharmacy to buy drugs after I get out of the doctor's office.
Look up Stark Law. Despite these laws some physicians have their own pharmacies on site depending on when they started their practice and pharmacy.
There is a law written after Tony Stark? Whuuuuuut! Seriously though, I live in Kenya and the chemist I go to; the man who owns it was a Doctor in India. Most simple ailments I go straight to him and he diagnoses me over the counter and sells me prescription drugs for super cheap.
Conflict of interest between maximizing revenue and not giving you expensive **** that will kill you.
Not only conflicts... But also sometimes Dr's are so busy with patients they don't know all of the drug conflicts (when using multiple meds) or complete mechanisms of drug (obviously there's apps/db's that help) but I'd definitely take a pharmacists word over recommended medicine of what interacts with each other over an MD. I'm not saying Dr's are bad since they prescribe the meds, but there's a reason pharmacists are important in a medical setting, especially in hospitals. I mean even at store owned pharmacies they sometimes help customers avoid bad interactions. This is from my experience anyway.
Pharmacies now have those clinics in them that they will diagnose and prescribe right then and there (though for minor problems only).
In developing countries, from personal experience, the doctors gain profit from the drugs they prescribe. They usually give you really expensive drugs with high dosage when a simple aspirin can do (for example). Much better in the States though.
In the US the drugs companies just bribe the doctors to prescribe really expensive drugs with high dosage when simpler drugs could do.
wwuuuuuuttt...? I had positive experience when I went to the doctor in Houston. Do they give certain % of profit or lump sum?
Every strategic sourcing or B-2-B/wholesale relationship is like this. Every industry conference or convention is sponsored and subsidized by one company trying to butter up their clients and provide them networking opportunities with other industry counterparts.
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Yeah people get offended by this in healthcare but its no different than any other industry. If anything the movement towards limiting doctor kickbacks created the era of direct consumer marketing for drugs, which I think is even more ridiculous. We now get inundated with commercials that spend 10 seconds saying "but do not take this if you have XYZ conditions..... please note this can cause XYZ up to and including death" as if the person is qualified to make those judgements. EDIT* to answer the OP: doctors in whats referred to the golden era (80's-early 90's) probably abused the crap out of the system and sold an excess of drugs they didn't need to prescribe.
