We’ve all been to the doctor’s office, been prescribed new medication and sent out the door with a bagful of free samples to get us started. Most often, the prescription drug sample we leave with isn’t the drug we wind up taking for whatever ails us. The free medication is often the brand name, more expensive variety of medication that our insurance companies either won’t cover or will only pay a small percentage of. Instead, we choose the cheaper generic brand, and that gleaming bagful of free medication is all but forgotten.

But is it? At OB-GYN offices, women are given freebies like diapers, diaper cream, baby bath wash and other baby related products once they’ve been found to be pregnant. At other offices we’re given free ink pens with brand name drugs engraved on them or other clever marketing techniques disguised as useful products that make us feel like we got something really neat for free.

In the end, we have to ask ourselves; are our doctors being bought? Of course, there are limits to what doctors can receive from a prescription drug company. They can’t receive kick-backs. They can’t receive financial compensation for prescribing any one drug. But are there other ways a company can persuade a doctor to prescribe one medication over another?

Doctors claim to be above all this, but there are reports of doctors receiving airline flights, vacation trips, game tickets and more from drug companies attempting to woo the doctors to their side. The more prescriptions written, the more drugs sold. The doctor is the ultimate middleman in this scenario.

To fight this perception, drug companies have banned their sales associates from offering a doctor more than a modest meal in their offices during a sales presentation. Still, the perception exists and will stay as long as patients are plied with freebies each time they leave a doctor’s office.