The Argument for Making Commercials for Perscription Medicine Illegal

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05162008/profile.html

Several comments I found on reddit on this article:

http://reddit.com/r/science/info/6jqot/comments/

"Direct to consumer advertising for the most part leads to consumer demand for unnecessary medications or new medications. This is generally harmful; e.g., the US has a much higher rate of use of newer antibiotics than most other countries and as such, faces a greater problem of antibiotic resistance."

"The psychotic cost of healthcare in the USA is because of one very simple reason - health insurance. Our grandparents, when your parents broke a bone or something, could take our parents to the hospital, get them tended to, and then pay the bill. And they were POOR. Now, no one can afford to pay cash at a hospital. And the reason is health insurance.

Health insurance creates REVERSE capitalism. Consider this: There's a town with 3 or 4 doctors. Your kid breaks their arm. You need to go have it set. The various doctors all charge different prices. It's a simple service, so you would go to the cheapest doctor (that had reliable care, I'm not talking about Dr. Chaz down by the river in his van) in town. Now, what if you had health insurance? You're not paying the bill, or you're only paying a fixed co-pay. Why go to the cheaper doctor when the more 'high class' ones are available? It then becomes a LIABILITY to the doctors to not charge the most they can get away with.

And it really is that simple."

"One more reason meds cost so much in the US. As a medical student, I've seen doctors put in tough spots because a patient demands a drug they've seen on a commercial but they really don't need."

Are we supposed to make coherant arguments against something that holds no bearing at all?

Insurance is reverse capitalism

He has a point - an incorrectly stated one - but nonetheless true one, that for the most part, health insurance will not be necessary for miscellaneous visits to the doctor &c. Forced insurance does encourage a spirit of consumerism. As for the impact of adverts, caveat emptor. This is not his or anyone else's decision to make.

-Jon

People who are silly enough to believe those ads for prescription drugs deserve to lose their money.  And if they learn a lesson, then it's been a value-added experience for them.  It's time they learnt to be sceptical: they might stop believing the lies peddled by politicians.

You don't have to pay for health insurance either.  If you save the money that it would have cost you, and stay fit and healthy, then if you ever need an operation then you'll have enough to pay for it.  You might not save enough to be kept alive for years in a vegetative condition on a hospital bed, but that's another blessing.

I would negotiate a settlement.

Pharma can't advertise drugs that people don't need.  Statists can't advertise statism that people don't need.

ABC news pushing for socialised medicine?

Quote:

"There's no question you'll be treated in France. Everyone is. The nation pays the bills and the hospitals don't get stiffed. It's an all-encompassing cradle-to-grave system. "

""There seems to be a feeling that Britain's socialized health system is the only one we can look at because it's English, it's the mother country. But in fact, the French share many of the same values that American consumers seek, like choice of physician and freedom from insurance company authorization of medical decisions. The French system is already far more similar to the American ideal," Dutton said.

Except it works."

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4647483&page=3

I hate to break this to you but:

Advertising can not and does not create demand.  Demand is there and suppliers/people/entrepeneurs/business folks attempt to satisfy this demand by supplying a product.  Advertising and marketing does provide information to potiential and actual consumers of a product.  If you believe their information is not true then please go to the that awful organization the FDA and complain to them.

I can show this through a simple example: I do not need anti-depressants.  So the suppliers can advertise anti-depressants until I break down and then actually need anti-depressants.  Bad example..  I being male do not need birth control pills.  The suppliers can advertise them to me until I need anti-depressants buy will never be able sell them to me.  See you can't manufacture demand.  (Unless you drive people totally insane though these maddening commercials.)

The reason for this advertising is easy.  The aformentioned suppliers spend billions bringing drugs and medical devices to the market.  They have to spent the mass majority of that money on testing.  Once tested these folks to make a profit have to provide information to as many customers as possible and if some question their doctors then maybe their doctors should study a little more carefully.

So eliminate the advertising and you eliminate a big chunk of the ability of suppliers to reach customers.

I have a better idea:

Eliminate the FDA and all the insane testing.  Then drug and device makers would be on their own (THey are now despite FDA approval) to test (They are on their own as they give the FDA the data) market and insure their products.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/24/controversiesinscience.guardianhayfestival

Boots, the high street chemist, is becoming the country's largest seller of quack medicine, according to Britain's leading scientific expert on alternative therapies.

Talking at the Hay literary festival today, Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, is to criticise the company for selling alternative medicines, in particular more than 50 homeopathic remedies, which are shown by clinical trials to be no more effective than sugar pills.

Boots, which has 1,500 stores across the UK, stocks 55 homeopathic therapies, 34 of which are sold under the company's own brand.

Ernst accuses the company of breaching ethical guidelines drawn up by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, by failing to tell customers that its homeopathic medicines contain no active ingredients and are ineffective in clinical trials.

Advertising can not and does not create demand.

Oh please... do you mean to say corporations mindwash people to buy their products? Get real. All adverts do is alert consumers to the existence of a product. No more than that.

-Jon

No, not just corporations. It's usually lone quacks that sell that stuff. They only get into big business later when they make it big, like the French homeopatic (suga' pillz) maker, Boiron.

Get real. All adverts do is alert consumers to the existence of a product. No more than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsedixitism

This reasoning is defeated by the fact that when a new product is introduced to the market (and advertised) demand quickly rises for it, even though there was no such demand before.

xSFx:

 

Get real. All adverts do is alert consumers to the existence of a product. No more than that.

This reasoning is defeated by the fact that when a new product is introduced to the market (and advertised) demand quickly rises for it, even though there was no such demand before.

This reasoning is not defeated by the fact that (some) new products experience quickly rising demand. The only thing we can say when we see rising demand for a product is that consumers believe this product is valuable. We can not say anything about why they believe it is valuable.

This reasoning is not defeated

Please give me another explanation, because to my way of thinking it goes like this: they're being told they need the product so the demand increases.

They might not actually need the product (the advertising may be false, as is the case with quack medicine), but they want the product because it was advertised as useful.

Here are some examples of what I mean: magnetic healing devices, good luck crystal bracelets, healing crystals, etc.

For more info: http://www.quackwatch.com/

This is how I see it: People who see the commercial are being told what the product does. If they believe that they can use this product as a means to serve certain ends that they have, then they will purchase it (given of course that they value the service of this particular end more than the service they get from other consumption/investment/saving they will have to give up to pay for this product.)

If it turns out that the product is useful in servicing their ends, then they have made a profit. They have effectiveliy exchanged the servicement of a lesser valued end for the servicement of a higher valued end.

if it turns out that the product is not useful in servicing their ends, then they have incurred a loss.

Obviously if the advertising is false, then this is fraud, and an infringement of property rights, so the seller can be taken to court.

This reasoning is defeated by the fact that when a new product is introduced to the market (and advertised) demand quickly rises for it, even though there was no such demand before.

It is, in virtue of the fact that it's a non sequitur. Before a product is made known, is it not logical that demand for it will be low? You can play around with semantics, and say this "created" the demand, but all it really did is alert the intended audience to the existence of the product. At best, if the advertising is misleading, it could be fraud. But that's it.

-Jon

Before a product is made known, is it not logical that demand for it will be low?

No one will come up with a beverage "just like Coke, in every possible sense, including price". They might make it better, thus answering the demand for better quality or make it cheaper, thus answering the demand for smaller prices.

The cases I'm referring to here are cases when demand is artificially created: the quack may say "you're feeling bad and tired because your body is full of toxins. Buy our detox medicine or detox diet book and flush bad substances out of your system".

if it turns out that the product is not useful in servicing their ends, then they have incurred a loss.

Obviously if the advertising is false, then this is fraud, and an infringement of property rights, so the seller can be taken to court.

 I've read the report about the lawsuit between QuackWatch and some Homeopathy practitioners.

The Court concluded with a sharp rebuke:
"The logical end-point of Plaintiff’s burden-shifting argument would be to permit anyone with the requisite filing fee to walk into any court in any state in the Union and file a lawsuit against any business, casting the burden on that defendant to prove that it was not violating the law. Such an approach, this Court finds, would itself be unfair."

The problem in this case is that QuackWatch had their own experts and the Judge concluded that they were "representing themselves" (even if they got the evidence right).

Just shows that it's not as easy as one might think to sue for fraud.

No one will come up with a beverage "just like Coke, in every possible sense, including price". They might make it better, thus answering the demand for better quality or make it cheaper, thus answering the demand for smaller prices.

The cases I'm referring to here are cases when demand is artificially created: the quack may say "you're feeling bad and tired because your body is full of toxins. Buy our detox medicine or detox diet book and flush bad substances out of your system".

Still doesn't "create" demand. It's up to the buyer whether to believe it or not.

The Court concluded with a sharp rebuke:
"The logical end-point of Plaintiff’s burden-shifting argument would be to permit anyone with the requisite filing fee to walk into any court in any state in the Union and file a lawsuit against any business, casting the burden on that defendant to prove that it was not violating the law. Such an approach, this Court finds, would itself be unfair."

The problem in this case is that QuackWatch had their own experts and the Judge concluded that they were "representing themselves" (even if they got the evidence right).

Just shows that it's not as easy as one might think to sue for fraud.

Just goes to show government courts are useless. Nothing new there.

-Jon

Still doesn't "create" demand. It's up to the buyer whether to believe it or not.

Is this not creating demand?