There is no indication that direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs improves health outcomes. It does, however, greatly increase the cost of medication. Since the marginal cost of producing more drugs is low, advertising, even at a positive RoI, leads to increased prices.
Do you have an citations to back that up? Because I do. And it's from the FDA.[1] I'll spare copying it all down and just leave these takeaways:
- FDA research, of patients who visited their doctors because of an ad they saw, and who asked about that prescription drug by brand name, 87 percent actually had the condition the drug treats. And in 6 percent of those DTC-generated visits, a previously undiagnosed condition was discovered.
- Only 7 percent of doctors said they felt "very pressured to prescribe" a particular advertised drug.
- According to the FDA study, a majority of doctors feel that DTC advertising increases patient awareness and involvement, improves compliance, and enhances the overall doctor-patient relationship.
[1]https://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm14356...
But, marketing is where my support starts to peter out. It seems crazy that marketing takes up such a large percentage of expenditure, it's not only wasteful but also introduces perverse incentives. I really think it would be great if trade deals could establish not just concessions like mandated strong intellectual property laws or restricted bulk negotiation, but also serious limitations on the other side of the coin, on something like pharma marketing.
If deep trade deals are justified by shaping the market to be at its most productive, I don't mind if that increases profits most of the time, but occasionally there will be measures that will improve the market but also reduce short term profit for some existing major players.
In practice, under the current situation the market is structured so that a profitable pharma company has to be good at generating demand, just as much as meeting a need. A company that can do the latter but not the former will go bust.
I think a world with more emphasis on judgements made by clinical research organizations (private or public) like NICE or the Cochrane Foundation rather than TV adverts, wine-ing and dining, and the nag factor on patients and overworked individual practitioners, would end up with a drastically more effective market for actually finding cures.
How much do drug companies spend on marketing? I've only ever seen article mention SG&A which is an accounting catch all for more than just marketing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_pa...
Now a sales rep was on the other end of Owens’s phone from Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc., the New Haven-based maker of Soliris—one of the world’s most expensive drugs, typically priced from $500,000 to $700,000 a year.
The rep was calling to argue with the treatment plan. She pressured Owens to continue Soliris treatments, ticking off detailed information about the mother’s organs that the doctor hadn’t shared with the drugmaker. “How did you know that?” Owens remembers thinking. She was monitoring the patient’s condition with seven hematologists and wasn’t swayed by the Alexion rep. “I was really taken aback by how bold and brash she was,” Owens says. “I’ve never had an experience like that—before or since.”
There was recently a discussion here about a new drug for ALS and when reading about it I took note of the line in the FAQ that mentions that anyone with a prescription can call the pharma company up and get a case manager to help explore their coverage and setup copay reimbursement ("Searchlight Support").
http://web.alsa.org/site/PageNavigator/alsa_radicava_faq.htm...
That's not exactly marketing, but it isn't really terrific that manufacturers are setting prices so high that they can spend significant resources helping people use their insurance.
I would imagine something in that billion dollars is marketing...
