Matthew Mintz is disturbed by a letter from CVS pharmacy, making overt recommendations of a brand name Merck diabetes drug:

Though today it was only a letter promoting a drug attached to a patient who might potentially need it, what’s next? Will I be receiving promotional calls from my local CVS pharmacy which seems like a professional to professional communication, but is really a disguised sales pitch? Will the retail pharmacist get a pop-up message when a patient is refilling a certain medication to ask their doctor to prescribe another? We are a free market society, and drug companies have a right to market their products, but the letter I received today is just plain wrong.

Pharmacies recommending switching to generic medications is fine, but it is to the patient’s detriment to start promoting expensive brand name medications.