One Side Effect: Bloated Healthcare Costs
Drug ads have gotten out of hand.
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has threatened to ban most advertising of prescription drugs to the public. Of course, the Big Pharma boys were warned of this ahead of time and started greasing politicians right, left and sideways. It will be tough to get Congress to agree—or to do much of anything.
Take Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat who presents himself as a friend of the little guy. His biggest contributors include Quest Diagnostics, Novo Nordisk, Bristol Myers, Astra Zeneca, Novartis, medical equipment maker Becton Dickinson, and many more just this year. Wyden was the guy who kept interrupting RFK Jr. at his confirmation hearing in February as Kennedy criticized Big Pharma—and now you know why.
Only the United States and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising. The Food and Drug Administration loosened its ad rules in the 1990s and the drug companies have run wild ever since. An editorial in Pub Med Central two years ago stated “DTC ads have been shown to misinform patients by over-emphasizing treatment benefits, under-emphasizing treatment risks, and promoting drugs over healthy lifestyle choices.”
So what? Big Pharma puts so many ads on network and cable TV that reporters are discouraged from saying anything bad about their products. The FDA has sued drug companies for advertising dishonestly—in 2009 Eli Lilly had to pay a fine of 1.4 BILLION dollars and Pfizer paid $2.3 billion.
In 2012 Glaxo Smith Kline paid $3 billion and Abbot was dinged for $1.6 billion. Just the cost of doing business, my friend. Retail spending on prescription drugs was $450 billion in 2023. More than half of that was spent on heavily-advertised drugs. Something is out of kilter.
If you think you’ve seen a lot of ads for Skyrizi, you’re right. Its maker spent $387 million on TV ads in 2023 (one noted side effect: tuberculosis). The same company (Abbvie) spent $351 million on TV ads for Rinvoq, and Dupixent got $307 million, meaning the top three drugs alone went over a billion dollars in ads.
Drug companies would fight restrictions on advertising by claiming First Amendment protection, but the Supreme Court has already issued decisions restricting what corporations can say versus private citizens. In addition, the companies would have a tough time fighting restrictions when cigarettes have been banned from broadcasting and most other ads since 1971. Yes, you could argue that cigarette smoking is bad for you and drugs aren’t, but it’s plenty dangerous to misuse prescription drugs, and the limited information consumers get from drug ads doesn’t exactly lead them to proper use of drugs, most of which have possibly dangerous side effects.
But I wouldn’t stop there; hey, I’m on a roll. We should also limit alcohol advertising. Booze has hundreds of bad side effects. Drunk driving kills more than 12,000 people annually, and some of the biggest users of alcohol are kids who aren’t even legally allowed to drink the stuff. The Centers for Disease Control reports 4,000 underage drinkers are killed by the stuff each year.
Watching a football game with the family is particularly dangerous: a third of fans said they started drinking as much as two hours before the kickoff and downed an average of three drinks—before the game even started! An ad-effectiveness study showed ads during NFL games produced “48 times more consumer engagement than the average primetime ad on broadcast and cable TV.” That alone should make us worry about the impact on children, sitting there while Dad pounds a few brewskis and TV ads make drinking seem like the most fun in the world.
Casinos should have to modify their ads that show happy customers winning big bucks and point out that most people lose when they gamble; likewise lotteries. Car advertisements should never show a car being driven in a way that wouldn’t be legal on public roads—it’s dangerous to tempt people to do stupid things with their vehicles, and young people are the most likely to do stupid things. Putting up a tiny warning that says “Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt” just makes it that much more appealing. It’s like the tiny sign that says “Please drink responsibly” when we all know that if everyone drank responsibly, half the booze companies would e out of business.
Finally, we should restrict advertising by personal injury attorneys; it promotes litigiousness and turns a formerly-respected profession into a bunch of rug salesmen hawking their wares.
But in that case, I’m mostly just tired of seeing their damned commercials.
You hit on one of my biggest peeves that makes no sense-the ridiculously stupid and clearly avoidable DWI related deaths and injuries. We absolutely know drinking impairs abilities like driving. We also know automobiles are big heavy objects that can easily kill if handled irresponsibly by someone who is impaired. Obviously the two things I mentioned should not be mixed.. but our govt came up with another solution to try to keep everyone happy (esp those giving them a little extra for their consideration)-thresholds, that allow you to drink and still get behind the wheel-which my common sense has always told me is a recipe for disaster. I have seen folks get giddy and stupid after one or two drinks-they might pass a breathalyzer, but you clearly realize they shouldn't get behind the wheel. Why not have law that says you CANNOT drink and drive period. What purpose does it serve to allow this.. is society better off allowing folks to get behind the wheel after partaking??? If this is allowed for population control it is working very well.. and the figures you provided illustrates this point quite nicely too.
" Drunk driving kills more than 12,000 people annually, and some of the biggest users of alcohol are kids who aren’t even legally allowed to drink the stuff. The Centers for Disease Control reports 4,000 underage drinkers are killed by the stuff each year."
Those are huge numbers to accept, just so fools can 'drink (a little) and drive'. There should be zero tolerance.. and if you get caught driving after drinking (which we now have the means to fairly easily determine) your weapon.. I mean car.. will be confiscated, auctioned off, and the proceeds go into a 'victims fund' for folks who have been 'victimized' (by these folks who shouldn't have been allowed to drive). It also shouldn't matter who the car belongs to-if someone let you use it, and you screw up.. it's gone.. and the obvious moral is: don't loan your car to someone who may decide to stop for a quick 'cool one'). This would definitely make people rethink their choice (or need) to get behind the wheel, when they shouldn't. The alcohol industry has rewarded our politicians richly to see to it that nothing like this will be considered....
Well written and researched.