Sirened

Yeah, everybody knows it costs an arm and a leg to have your head examined by a psychologist. But did you realize that for many of them, their clients aren’t the only ones paying their salary?

Yes, for many, the roughly $300 an hour they make is not good enough for them. So they take extra money from the pharmaceutical companies. In return for these kickbacks, they prescribe more of that companies drugs then they otherwise would.

According to this article in the NY Times, more shrinks are prescribing anti-psychotics to children at an alarming rate. One case that is highlighted is a 12 year old girl being put on Risperdal, a drug for schizophrenia because she had an eating disorder. One of the side effects of Risperdal is increased appetite. The girl put on some weight but now has back problems from the drug. And it turns out that this shrink was given $7,000 in kickbacks for giving lectures for Johnson & Johnson, coincidentally, they are the makers of Risperdal.

This is just one case of many where Shrinks, who are supposed to help people, are sacrificing people’s well being to stuff their wallets even more. This behavior needs to be illegal, but it’s not! And it won’t be made illegal as long as pharmaceutical lobbyists are prancing around Washington and buying expensive dinners for government officials and helping to finance their campaigns.

I propose a redistribution where everyone in Washington now is removed and randomly put elsewhere, some on the Moon perhaps. And we just put random new people to take their place, maybe even a few monkeys to replace some of the monkeys that are currently in power.

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