The cost of the wearying number of pharmaceutical ads you see everyday has been placed in the tens of millions of dollars. That's per day, every day.
Who decided that was OK?
According to Sourcewatch.org (1), only the United States and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer advertising by drug companies. But Sourcewatch also reports that lobbying forces are being brought to bear on the regulatory agencies of other countries to allow this. It's no surprise when you consider the resources of a $120B industry that could be leveraged toward increasing market share and sales, especially of targeted, highest-margin products. The potential for the drug companies and their shareholders is huge. But why is that OK anywhere?
State legislatures in the U.S. are beginning to wrestle with this, if for no more nobler reason than the enormous impact on state-funded managed care programs. In October, 2007, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported: "A new analysis provided by the managed care industry reports that from 1999 to 2000, prescriptions written for the top 50 most heavily advertised drugs rose 24.6 percent, compared to 4.3 percent for all other drugs combined." (2)
Why drug companies would spend that amount on advertising is obvious, when you can trigger the kind of increase in sales described in this example. And they have not been slow to take advantage of it, with drug promotion costs tripling in a decade, according to a University of Pittsburgh study (3).
But consumers are not free to make drug decisions for themselves in the U.S. An individual's health care provider is charged with making those decisions based on their diagnosis and the efficacy of a particular drug for that condition. So why is direct-to-consumer advertising OK? Who is benefitting from this?
It's not the consumer, who ultimately pays the cost of this advertising, and should be getting their health care provider's best decision on treatment anyway. And it's not the taxpayer who must fund government drug programs.
Let's see. Who's left to benefit from this?
According to Sourcewatch, the industry's rationale for drug advertising is to educate consumers on potential conditions so that they seek earlier diagnosis and treatment. However, a recent GAO report indicated that the companies focus their advertising on relatively few drugs and conditions, and most of those involve chronic conditions such as high cholesterol, asthma, diabetes, where the target consumer is very likely to already have a high awareness. (1)
Educate yourself. The discussion on this subject will increase, if for no other reason than we are careening toward an economic 'brick wall' of out-of-control health care costs. As a taxpayer, be aware of what your state and federal representatives are doing to address this. The cost-versus-benefit perspective on direct-to-consumer drug advertising is way upside-down. Let your voice be heard, and let's put this back the way it was.
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