Posted by Bonnie_CA on April 5, 2007, at 15:42:07
In reply to Re: patients have been sold out » gardenergirl, posted by linkadge on April 5, 2007, at 11:44:03
Yes, drug companies want to do the bare minimum. Get you hooked for life on medications that barely help, so they can make big bucks. It's way more profitable than getting you on a medication that works, because once that drug patent runs out, they aren't making their bucks.
I wonder if the tune would change if those people making these decisions actually had to handle the people they were supposedly treating? Let's send some untreated (or unsuccessfully treated) bipolar patients to their homes, or have them pay the bills of the severely clinically depressed, or have them deal with the severely OCD person for a few weeks. I bet they'd feel more inclined to find a solution and not as inclined to line their pockets.
Why was my schizophrenic uncle taken off the medication that has worked for him SINCE THE 60S? Because there was something "newer and better". He ran away, and something happened where he died alone in the woods. (Heart attack? Stroke? We'll never know.) What was wrong with his old medication? It MIGHT cause some kind of heart problem. And somehow giving him a new medication (when he's 56) is going to "save" him? No, just big money for pharmaceuticals. I mean, if schizophrenics stayed on the drugs that worked for them, they wouldn't make money. And, I thought I'd mention, every single time they have tried him on one of those "new and improved, much better" drugs, he went crazy and had to be hospitalized. He had said (before this last episode) that he would rather die than go back to a hospital. I know the drug companies couldn't care less about how my uncle felt, and how it hurt our family trying to get him admitted when he had his episodes (almost always induced by a medication change). No, it isn't their problem. Their families are probably "sane" and they are fully insulated against the savage crimes they commit against "other" people's families.
It really hasn't been about the patients for decades. As long as they are making their monies, we can all suffer, and have our families torn apart, and lives disrupted, and dreams shattered. Just remember, that isn't their problem.
*sigh*
-Bonnie
poster:Bonnie_CA
thread:746993
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070402/msgs/747265.html