Dear Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Georgia and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals,
This is an open letter to request that you butt out of my child's routine healthcare, other than to pay the bills, BC, which is what you get paid to do. Pfizer... Well, no one asked for your opinion.
Our family has a pediatrician who tends to all my child's healthcare needs that can't be met by me or Mother Nature. Our doctor is outstanding. You know, unlike your marketing department, Pfizer, whose primary agenda is making money for your shareholders while putting lives at risk with off-label marketing and pushing through drugs that haven't been thoroughly tested, he went to medical school and actually knows a thing or two about keeping kids healthy.
When I take either of my children into his office for their well-child visits, I can assure you that he knows precisely which vaccines are due and he and I have been working together for at least 8 years now to ensure that my children receive the vaccines they need when they are scheduled, but that they are never given more than two vaccines at a time so that – God forbid – should there be a toxic reaction to a vaccine, we can more readily determine which vaccine caused it.
The phone calls and letters "informing" me that my son has missed "an important vaccine," that appear to be coming from Blue Cross, but which are actually paid for by Pfizer, as noted in the fine print, are wholly unwelcome and dare I say, a conflict of interest on behalf of you, Blue Cross. First of all, is it not a violation of HIPPA for you to sell my private information to a drug company and then allow them to market their products to me under your name?
Blue Cross and Pfizer, I am not an idiot. Nor are most parents. We do not need you looking over our shoulders, or those of our trusted family physicians, telling us what drugs we need to take, all in the name of making your CEOs and shareholders richer.
I am not some crunchy mom who fails to see the life-saving importance of having my child inoculated against the world's deadliest diseases. I am, however, quite well-informed about the vaccines my children need and those that are of questionable use. Moreover, the vaccine you are pushing, Prevnar 13, while quite beneficial in the fact that it protects against bacteria that are drug-resistant, has only just come onto the market in the last month and a half, yet despite this fact, was indeed, given to my son at his last well-child visit three weeks ago.
If you want to market your new drug, market it directly to physicians rather than using scare tactics with parents to make them feel as if they have somehow failed their children. And if you're going to market it directly to patients or their parents, at least be sure they haven't already received it before you waste their time.
By the way, I'll be contacting my congressional representatives about this. Not that it will do much good since I'm sure you're both lining their pockets as well, but at least I will have voiced my opinion about your unscrupulous methods and maybe, just maybe, someone will care enough about real people to stop you.
Sincerely yours,
One Angry Mother
This is an open letter to request that you butt out of my child's routine healthcare, other than to pay the bills, BC, which is what you get paid to do. Pfizer... Well, no one asked for your opinion.
Our family has a pediatrician who tends to all my child's healthcare needs that can't be met by me or Mother Nature. Our doctor is outstanding. You know, unlike your marketing department, Pfizer, whose primary agenda is making money for your shareholders while putting lives at risk with off-label marketing and pushing through drugs that haven't been thoroughly tested, he went to medical school and actually knows a thing or two about keeping kids healthy.
When I take either of my children into his office for their well-child visits, I can assure you that he knows precisely which vaccines are due and he and I have been working together for at least 8 years now to ensure that my children receive the vaccines they need when they are scheduled, but that they are never given more than two vaccines at a time so that – God forbid – should there be a toxic reaction to a vaccine, we can more readily determine which vaccine caused it.
The phone calls and letters "informing" me that my son has missed "an important vaccine," that appear to be coming from Blue Cross, but which are actually paid for by Pfizer, as noted in the fine print, are wholly unwelcome and dare I say, a conflict of interest on behalf of you, Blue Cross. First of all, is it not a violation of HIPPA for you to sell my private information to a drug company and then allow them to market their products to me under your name?
Blue Cross and Pfizer, I am not an idiot. Nor are most parents. We do not need you looking over our shoulders, or those of our trusted family physicians, telling us what drugs we need to take, all in the name of making your CEOs and shareholders richer.
I am not some crunchy mom who fails to see the life-saving importance of having my child inoculated against the world's deadliest diseases. I am, however, quite well-informed about the vaccines my children need and those that are of questionable use. Moreover, the vaccine you are pushing, Prevnar 13, while quite beneficial in the fact that it protects against bacteria that are drug-resistant, has only just come onto the market in the last month and a half, yet despite this fact, was indeed, given to my son at his last well-child visit three weeks ago.
If you want to market your new drug, market it directly to physicians rather than using scare tactics with parents to make them feel as if they have somehow failed their children. And if you're going to market it directly to patients or their parents, at least be sure they haven't already received it before you waste their time.
By the way, I'll be contacting my congressional representatives about this. Not that it will do much good since I'm sure you're both lining their pockets as well, but at least I will have voiced my opinion about your unscrupulous methods and maybe, just maybe, someone will care enough about real people to stop you.
Sincerely yours,
One Angry Mother
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1 comment:
Did anything more come of this? I just got the same mailing and can't believe more information is not online about this...
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