Do Doctors get influenced by Freebies?

Doctors get influenced by freebies and Pharmaceutical companies also enjoys it at profit. Here, Doctors and patients are in WIN-WIN situation at the cost of patients money. This is sophisticated way of corruption. If you see the variation in prices of same medicine from different companies, it is horrible. The most important factor of these price variation is due to margin of profit. To get maximum profit, pharmaceutical companies offer free gifts, foreign tours, sponsorship for various conferences to doctors and pharma companies recover these expenses through doctors from patient's money. Hope, these malpractice get stopped by pharma companies and doctor communities. Each year, millions of Indian population goes below poverty line due to healthcare expenses. Its time to think about such patients.

Its a yes and no from my side, its not like doctors everytime prescribe the same thing, they first look at the patient, and then decide whether he can go for the medicine, yes at times these freebies play their part in it and makes doctor to prescribe them on most occasions, but it also depends on how the Medical reps showcase their product if the doctor is convinced about the product and the molecule even though it is a cheap one and is effective, then he'll prescribe as his first priority will be to cure the patient as soon as possible, most of them don't expect such freebies, as doctors are here to provide service for people and not for these freebies, but if the Government feels doctors are being influenced with these freebies then go ahead and bar them, but then in the end it will come down to how you will track these freebies being given by the pharma companies, many MNC's go ahead and sponsor these doctors and nobody has a clue of it.