Dollars for Doctors; Getting a T3 Prescription

Propublica says, "Doctors who received payments from the pharmaceutical industry prescribed drugs differently than their colleagues who didn’t. And the more money those doctors received, on average, the more brand-name medications they prescribed."That's the result of their investigation using a large database of doctors and the prescriptions they write.

Good news, though: you can use ProPublica's database to find a doctor in your area (in the US) who prescribes T3. Many patients have a hard time finding a doctor who'll write a prescription for T3. T3's official name is Liothyronine. Go to the site, click on your state, sort by drug (click on "drug"), and scroll down to liothyronine, and click on it. You'll see some of the doctors in your state who prescribe T3.

Sad to say that the the most common prescriptions in the database are atorvastatin (a statin drug) and levothyroxine (syncrap).

In happier news, I'm fighting a cold--and winning. Thursday I was too tired at the end of the day to get up and go home. Half an hour after using some hydrocortisone cream, I was able to drive myself home. Friday, my head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. But between hydrocortisone and a little aspirin and guaifenesin, I've felt tired but not sick. No coughing, sneezing, runny nose, or aches and pains except when I first get up. Yay!

Sources:

"We've Been Tracking Pharma Payments to Doctors for Nearly a Decade. We Just Made a Big Breakthrough." Charles Ornstein, December 12, 2019. ProPublica.

"Prescriber Checkup" by Ryann Grochowski Jones, Lena V. Groeger and Charles Ornstein, Updated February 2019. ProPublica.

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