Simple: Prime time TV ads for prescriptions drugs. These ads should be outlawed immediately. We have no business telling our doctors what drugs we need. Free pens and sticky notes for doctors are bad enough; the current level of big-pharma spending on TV ads is reprehensible.
Out.
You can track future comments on this post via this RSS feed. You can trackback this post by pinging this URL. Allowed HTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Because theirs was destroyed in an accident and they need one
Browse by category:
Explore by tag:
We aren't very into all that copyright stuff. Creative Commons licenses are better, so RC is licensed under this one.
Quote Radical Congruency at will. Inbound links are appreciated, and required for direct quotations.
Dead on!
I think we are quickly becoming a culture of druggies..
Plus, I really didn’t want to know about Mike Ditka’s problems down there anyway.
I hate the TV and magazine ads for drugs, the whole concept is twisted and wierd.
But I do suspect that the cost of drugs is a little more complex than just their advertising budgets. That’s gut feeling, though, it’d be interesting to see a comparison of the advertising budgets vs the costs of development and testing…
Development costs are high, but the corporate profit margins for US drug companies are much higher than for their foreign counterparts (-1 point for unsubstantiated claim…). Cutting the profit margin (which would hurt only investors and top exects) and eliminating ads could lower prices considerably.
Let’s not forget that prices have been high fo a long time but the TV ads have only been on for a couple of years. Print ads and giveaways for much longer, but not the TV ads.
In my opinion the biggest problem with US healthcare is the disconnect between most consumers and the payment for the service. Think about it - you get the drug, it’s prescribed by a doc, paid for by a health insurance policy whos premium is paid for by your employer. Your connection to the transaction is tenuous at best. What if the doc prescibed it and you actually paid for it? You might ask your doc if there were other options and what they cost. Do I really need the $100 prescription or will the $50 one do? As it is now, you have no incentive to ask because your copay is the same no matter what.
Perhaps the drug companies should focus on making drugs that help people instead of their bottom line. The carelessness and greed of American drug producers is inexcusable.
Salguod-
Worse yet, the people who can’t afford the $100 drugs or the $50 ones, and have no insurance, are the least empowered to do something about it. It’s those of us who are least affected by high drug costs that have the most power to lower them, yet the least interest in doing so.
So, how can we help?