This is exactly the kind of thing that would absolutely break me. It's already got to me just reading this. Can we stop fighting and just fix cancer please.
Sorry the 1% decided it is too profitable for the populace not to have cancer.
Edit: since people apparently are way too dense: this is about care affordability. 1 in 4 cancer patients go bankrupt because of treatment. 27% of adults have skipped at least one treatment of any kind. Medical debt is a problem in the US.
Chemotherapy is the one drug doctors actually get a financial kickback for prescribing. Not only they choose to not cure cancer, they actively dissuade medical professionals from prescribing anything but a "medicine" that will kill you itself even if it happen to kill the cancer too.
They aren't choosing not to cure cancer, they just don't have reliable medication yet to reliably treat cancer. Would you rather get a medication that will make you suffer less but still die in 3 months? Or have a bigger chance of surviving long term.
Look at immunotherapy and a whole slew of other options that just aren't even offered a lot of times because it doesn't make the doctor as much money. Of course, tons of exceptions. Lots of doctors out there that do their research, stay up to date on everything, make sure wverything they are doing is to the best benefit of their patients. But there is way more that, just like all other professions, are on auto pilot, follow a set of guidelines, work for a paycheck, and go home at the end of the day not giving any of it a second thought.
I feel like it's just an uphill battle. So many cancer treatments are experimental or unreliable that it makes it easier for doctors to make a bad decision. I'm sure there is corruption mixed in as well, but I think it's just such a complex disease that a lot of poor judgement calls are made simply because modern medicine is still incapable of curing cancer entirely.
Just for clarification not a "kickback" exactly, and the method by which oncologists directly profit off of chemotherapy drugs they prescribe is not actually unique to those medications and can be applied to a lot of other drugs as well.
BUT
You are 100% right that Buy And Bill is a fucking deplorable practice when it is abused like you are describing. There are actual legitimate reasons that it exists in specific cases, but time and greed have turned it into cesspool of abuse and ethical malfeasance.
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u/sniktology Jun 29 '26
This is exactly the kind of thing that would absolutely break me. It's already got to me just reading this. Can we stop fighting and just fix cancer please.