The OR just went designer
Drug companies are counting on you not wanting just any old "generic" medical devices in your body. No, that won't do, which is why you now have the option of… (drum roll, please) a name-brand device!
Alongside designer jeans and handbags, the heart docs can now offer their own designer option. Should your doctor insist you need a stent to open up those pesky arteries, you can now request a CYPHER? Stent.
I must say, when this commercial crossed my television screen one evening, I believe my jaw hit the floor. I'm truly wondering if there is no branch of the medical field that the drug companies won't slide their money-grubbing fingers into, looking to bang out a profit on anything and everything.
Sure, some company has to make these devices, and I know the company name appears on the packaging. Needles, gauze, you name it—someone makes it and stamps their name on it. It's basic commerce.
But to actually promote a device through a commercial on the television, as if patients are supposed to flock to their doctor's office clambering for a name- brand stent—well, it defies all semblance of rationality, not to mention propriety.
If the hospital should sell out of that particular stent, should doctors expect you to reschedule your surgery until such a time that it's available again? Will they offer rain checks?
Of course not! This whole idea and any attached scenario is simply ridiculous. But that won't stop pharmaceutical reps from presenting this device as the latest- and-greatest in cardiovascular health. It seems your heart has become a gold mine of potential treatment options. Since heart disease is the number one killer in this country, Big Pharma is going to do its best to profit grandly on that grim statistic.
The website for this designer device shows smiling, active people who seem to have a new lease on life—just by requesting a name-brand stent. The company's marketing angle is that their stent is the most studied, used and proven of all stents.
That reminds me of high school yearbook categories of "most popular" and "most likely to succeed"—usually followed some years later by "where are they now?" If you have heart disease, you have a lot more to worry about than whose name is on a stent.
Let's not lose focus from the real conversation you should be having with your doctor. How about the study that came out saying stents don't actually help? You can't be expected to believe that it's because you used the wrong brand.
