If you're upset over the high price of prescription drugs, consider this: [View All]

I work in a large internal medicine practice. It is standard operating procedure for pharmaceutical representatives to buy an entire medical office lunch so the rep can get MAYBE 10 minutes in front of a doctor.

I've seen the bills for some of these lunches when they are delivered to our practice and the average bill is about $150 (I've seen as low as $85 for pizzas and as high as $350 for a spread brought in by a private chef).
They are frequently more than $150 a shot, but lets go with a conservative price of $150.

Now, consider that a drug rep may be doing lunches at various practices 4 days out of the week. That's $600 a week spent by just one drug rep for lunches taken to medical practices.

Next, say that a drug rep only does lunches for three weeks time out of the month. That's $1,800 a month on lunches. Spread out over the year, that comes out to $21,000 a year.

Next, say you are in an urban area and there are at least 50 drug reps providing 50 medical offices lunches a week. That comes to $1,050.000.00 per year on what is known in the medical community as "drug lunches."

Then, lets imagine that there are 50 urban areas where this takes place. The yearly drug lunch tab jumps up to $52.5 million. And that's a CONSERVATIVE estimate. This takes place all over the country.

This isn't counting the cost of countless pens, clocks, note pads, hand soap and hand sanitizers that are given out by drug reps everyday.

CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW MUCH DRUG COSTS COULD BE LOWERED IN THIS COUNTRY IF THE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES QUIT GIVING MEDICAL PRACTICES A FREE LUNCH???

I refuse to eat them, as I consider it unethical to do so given my attitudes and opinions against big pharma. I know my "boycotting" of these lunches doesn't do anything, but at least I can eat my lunch with a clean conscience.