Wanna Buy Some Drugs?

Remember those gorgeous women dragging a large briefcase on wheels that would come into the waiting rooms while you were waiting for a doctor’s appointment? They were pharmaceutical salespeople, offering free samples… and sometimes hints that some revenue-sharing or other tangible benefits that could be in the cards for doctors willing to bend the rules and stoop that low.

They don’t do that anymore. Instead, that U.S.-directed sales effort comes in the form of direct-to-consumer advertising, so much of it focused on traditional broadcast networks, whose average demos skew well-north of 50 (or 60!) and cable networks catering to that same cohort. “Drug companies spent more than $6 billion last year on direct-to-consumer ads, according to the consulting firm Kantar Media. More than 770,000 such ads were aired in 2016, the most recent year for which stats are available. That’s up a whopping 65% from 2012.” Los Angeles Times, April 10^th. That’s just on television!!!! Think online and social media advertising, promotional ads, etc.

But the pharmas themselves tell us it’s just the cost of being innovative. “Pharmaceutical companies often cite research and development spending to justify high drug prices in the U.S. But they make much more from those high prices than they spend on R&D, researchers found.

“According to research published on the Health Affairs blog, the 15 drug companies that made the 20 best-selling drugs worldwide in 2015 made $116 billion in excess revenue from premium drug prices in the U.S. Meanwhile, they spent only $76 billion on global research and development.

“The excess revenue comes from drug prices that are much higher in the U.S. than in Canada, Denmark, Ireland and the U.K., the researchers said. Drug prices in those countries for the 15 companies studied were 41% of their U.S. counterparts on average.

“U.S patients, businesses and taxpayers would have saved about $40 billion in 2015 if the 15 companies had lowered the premium prices they put on drugs in the U.S. so they were equivalent to global R&D spending, the researchers found. In 2015, Americans spent $325 billion on pharmaceuticals, according to the CMS.

“Some companies, including Biogen and Teva, raked in more than double their global R&D budgets via U.S. premium drug pricing. Biogen made enough from premium pricing of just one product—its best-selling multiple sclerosis drug Tecfidera—to cover all of its R&D spending, and Teva did the same with its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone.” ModernHealthcare.com (3/7/17). On average, these pharmas spend less than 15% of their revenues on research and development.

And you wonder why U.S. prescription drug prices are the highest on earth, sometimes a multiple of the cost of the same drugs in other countries. What’s even worse, other than catering to hypochondriacs who instantly believe that they are suffering from whatever the advertising is promising to cure or relieve, so many of those ads are completely misleading. But they drive consumers to their doctors, begging for a prescription, and doctors are more often than willing to oblige. The marketing messaging itself is also often a disservice to the public it is trying to reach.

Only one other country, New Zealand, allows these consumer-directed ads over the airways. Writing for the April 10^th Los Angeles Times, David Lazarus explains how bad such advertising really is: “[A] new study finds that U.S. authorities take such a lackadaisical approach to so-called direct-to-consumer drug ads that many of the commercials violate federal guidelines and, unsurprisingly, the quality of information presented is alarmingly low.

“‘The advertisements don’t often represent the best treatment or medication available,’ said Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale University and the study’s lead researcher, ’They’re selling products.’… The concern, he told me, ‘is that these advertisements are doing more harm than good.’

“Don’t expect a crackdown anytime soon. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, amid a rollback of government regulations under President Trump, is considering even more leeway for drug companies to pitch prescription meds… ‘It’s allowed because of a broad interpretation of free-speech rights,’ Ross said. ‘The question is whether this information is accurate and useful, or whether these companies are yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater.’

“Almost the entire developed world, including the World Health Organization, says it’s the latter… The main problem, critics say, is that these are complicated medical issues, and you simply can’t communicate everything a patient needs to know for an informed decision in less than a minute… As a result, according to the Yale study, ‘the information provided is unreliable and potentially misleading.’

“The drug industry, needless to say, sees things differently. It presents itself as a friend to patients, striving first and foremost to heal the sick and safeguard the public… Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group, says direct-to-consumer ads are ‘designed to provide scientifically accurate information to patients so that they are better informed about their healthcare and treatment options.’

“It says such marketing ‘encourages patients to visit their doctors’ offices for important doctor-patient conversations about health that might otherwise not take place’…Yep, putting patients first, that’s the drug industry… Or you can side with actual medical practitioners — that would be doctors — who say direct-to-consumer drug ads are dangerous.”

If we can ban cigarette and tobacco advertising from the airways, it’s pretty clear that we can do the same for dangerous ads for prescription drugs. But then, who is willing to buy television ads if not a market that targets older demographics that still live with a channel changing remote without the ability to access to OTT alternatives. And expecting the Trump administration to take action against big business to save the lives of ordinary Americans? Yeah, right!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that when it comes to what’s best for most of us, what actually keeps us safe and healthy, almost always that is a sacrificial lamb to profit-seeking big business.