We are one of two countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise on TV. Do you see drug commercials as a good thing or bad?
On balance I’d say negative. On the positive they do generate awareness among consumers. On the negative these meds are mostly not paid for directly by consumers, but by insurance and the government. You get a cycle very high pharma profits, heavy research and investment, then massive marketing costs to pressure consumers and doctors to pay for drugs that may be marginally better but exponentially more expensive.
The marketing of drug doctors and medical care does one thing drive up prices. Our HC system is a joke. For an individual to get semi decent JC plans is at least 6k a year and would be accompanied by large deductibles. If I were to get an individual PPO plan it would cost double. There are so many things wrong with HC in America and ads for prescription medicine aren’t helping
The most ridiculous thing about drug commercials is their stupid drug names. Why must pharma make up a really stupid name for a drug that already has a perfectly stupid name. Why must something generically called provonoranium have a label brand name of Univarystorp? Those are stupid made up names, but not any worse than the real ones we see every news hour on the tube.
Always seemed a bit weird to me --- advertising drugs that the audience can't even buy without a doctor's prescription.
Why are 99% of the ads now for super expensive injectable drugs for chronic bowel diseases or autoimmune skin diseases? Have hardon pills and antidepressants suddenly become so unprofitable?
Would love to hear the 50 seconds of cover your ass side effects for a certain drug being pushed on everyone.
Ads for allergies or minor pain relief make some sense (over the counter, or maybe low level but common prescriptions). The ads that are more like “if you have stage IV lung cancer with TS264 mutation, talk to your doctor about phiboflvsivsm” are absolutely baffling to me. I assume the ads are actually aimed moreso at the doctors, which in a way makes sense if it’s just about general “awareness”, but it’s also a bit damning towards the doctor to learn about new meds from an ad thrown between beer commercials.
"May cause endless sunshine, gigantic windows with harsh sunlight permeating every corner of every indoor space you encounter, oppressively pleasant background music, visits with euphorically happy grandchildren, carnivals, outdoor luncheons, kite flying, sudden teleportation to scenic locations, line dancing, cornhole, overly active gaydar, heightened awareness of the degree of diversity within groups of strangers, extra bathtubs, kittens, puppies, thoughts of suicide, and death."
Then having to deal with all the know-it-all's marching into your office demanding a prescription for something they heard about on TV.
They are bad but not as bad as the endless BS ads from Morgan and Morgan and Dan Newlin. How the Fla Bar allows these clowns to promote the amount of recoveries is crazy to me.
The rationale is that potential patients will nag their doctors into prescribing the drugs. The pharmaceutical companies probably spend even more marketing to doctors than they do on the television commercials. Apparently the strategy is effective or they wouldn't continue using it. I also suspect that the commercials soften patients into accepting outrageously high prices for the drugs.
