Month: June 2002

The Seattle Times: Local News: Clinic charging drug-firm reps: Polyclinic demands $30 an hour before it will hear sales pitch

A local physician-owned medical practice has decided to charge all drug sales reps for the time they keep doctors away from their patients: if the Polyclinic wasn’t already our pediatrician, I’d be finding some way to get on their list.

The “pay per view” policy, which went into effect Monday, will levy fees ranging from $30 for one hour’s access to the clinic to $200 for eight hours.

$30 an hour seems cheap: I would have made it $100 and $1000 for the full day.

I have always been amazed at the number of immaculately groomed and dressed drug salespeople I would see in the halls and elevators, pressing their free samples, fighting for shelf space. I know medicine is a for profit industry but I shouldn’t have to feel like I’m competing with salespeople for my physician’s attention.

I especially like the veiled threat that doctors who limit access to salespeople will lose out on valuable treatment options: isn’t that what journals are for? Are we supposed to think a board-certified physician is going to take the advice of generic sales person on matters of patient care and pharmacology?

Most of the comments missed the point: this isn’t about an additional revenue stream for doctors, but a nuisance tax, charging back the expense for the time diverted from patient care to those drug companies who are willing to pay for it. The doctors may use the money to fund indigent care or subsidize medical school scholarships, for all we know: what matters is that those who want access to a scarce resource should have to pay for it, just as patients have to.

NPR : Talk of the Nation for Wednesday, June 05, 2002 : Inside EBay

I heard some of this piece today on NPR: the bits I heard were effusive in their praise, but there were some interesting anecdotes.

Omidyar really knew he was onto something when he put up a listing for a broken $30 laser pointer that he was about to throw out.
Continue reading “is ebay a perfect market?”

Anyone know how to make these new tabbed browsers (Galeon, Mozilla, Chimera/Navigator) open a new tab rather than a new window when “TARGET=_new” is called? Hmm, well, to answer my own question, it’s in Mozilla 1.0’s prefs, but if you hold the Ctrl key when you click, you open a new tab instead of loading a new page into the existing window.

Hmm, well, to answer my own question, there’s something close to this in Mozilla 1.0’s prefs, but if you hold the Ctrl key when you click, you open a new tab instead of loading a new page into the existing window. The behavior I would like to load pages in the existing window but create tabs for all new windows.

I want a device that answers the phone and if it hears either a lengthy pause or the muffled hubbub of a telemarketing boilerroom, it quietly hangs up and blocks the number from ever ringing again.

Yes, I have caller ID, but not all callers are ID’ed. And I have an answering machine but every call I let it answer is one I would have liked to pick up.

what exactly are these people doing?

I get a come-on from QPB to take 5 books for 5 dollars. Perhaps I can find something worth that much . . .

I’m amazed at how many and how, um, mechanical/technical the books on sex seem to be. Not a lot on health or the relationship aspects: it’s all about pleasure. I counted 5 how-to books and a couple of books of saucy erotica, including one that claimed to cover all aspects of vampire erotica, with 5 “bonus werewolf stories.”

It’s a far cry from Freddy the Pig.