Free samples of prescription drugs are costly to patients, study says
It pretty much operates the same way as any cartel. They hire dealers (doctors) to hand out free samples in communities across the country, get you hooked, and you know the rest.
It doesn’t seem that the free samples wound up saving patients much money. Those who were seen in private practices walked away with prescriptions for $465 worth of medications, on average, while the patients treated at the academic medical center got prescriptions that cost about $200 to fill. “In other words, the national mean retail cost of the prescriptions received at an office visit for acne is conservatively two imes higher compared with the AMC (academic medical center), where samples were unavailable,” the researchers concluded.
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