Only Praxis Alerts All Praxis. It's a back-door method to get patients in the front door. In their television ads, Flo, a fictional senior with arthritis, urges viewers to join CBM in order to keep big government out of my medicine cabinet. Your premiums probably won't go down if CBM gets its way, since the group opposes legislation that would give Medicare recipients the same discounts received by the Defense Department and other agencies. That makes sense when you pull back the curtain and learn that instead of being funded by individual donations, CBM is funded overwhelmingly by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America , whose former marketing director, Tim Ryan, is now CBM's director.
Drug companies have interests to protect, and it's their money.
No one has to go along with it. Nonprofit health-related groups are increasingly coming under the sway of drug companies and medical device manufacturers. The phenomenon's infiltration into health care has Stephen Grund, an oncologist at Albany Medical College, worried. I tell people that these corporations are only doing what they are supposed to do make a profit. They fund these groups because it's a way to increase their business.