Institute for Policy Innovation

Dallas, TX. Sunday newspapers bombard readers with advertisements for department stores, office products, cars, clothing, and food. Yet no one is complaining that they can’t afford food because all the grocery stores advertise, or that GM, the number one advertiser in the country, could sell its cars cheaper if the company quit advertising.

Then why is it different for prescription drug advertising?

The critics of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising claim that 1) it increases drug costs, 2) it increases the dependency upon and use of drugs, 3) giving away free drug samples lures patients into using drugs, and 4) ads encourage patients to demand that doctors give them an advertised drug.

“Virtually all of these criticisms are misleading or wrong,” says IPI Visiting Scholar Dr. Merrill Matthews. “The health care system is changing from a doctor-directed system to a patient-directed one. Patients are hungry for information, and prescription drug ads provide at least some of that information. Ironically, if the critics succeed in limiting or removing these regulated ads, more and more people would be forced to go to the unregulated Internet for health care information.”

Matthews continued, “Prescription drug advertising isn’t the problem, it is the solution.”

Full Article