Why drugs cost so much: US medical marketing reaches $30 billion, drug ads top surge

[JacksinPA]

https://www.apnews.com/f44a7baa710d458ca50edd66affc1b91

Ads for prescription drugs appeared 5 million times in just one year, capping a recent surge in U.S. medical marketing, a new analysis found.

The advertisements for various medicines showed up on TV, newspapers, online sites and elsewhere in 2016. Their numbers soared over 20 years as part of broad health industry efforts to promote drugs, devices, lab tests and even hospitals.
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Medical marketing reached $30 billion in 2016, up from $18 billion in 1997. And this is paid for by the high prices at the pharmacy, especially for the newer biologic & blood thinner drugs that are not covered by most drug insurance plans.

I recently checked out a sleep drug developed by a Japanese pharma company. Not covered by my Plan D insurance, out-of-pocket cost for 30 days supply of Rozerem is $479, or over $15/day. It is listed as being 1/3 that price from Canadian pharmacies but none have it in stock. Go figure.

The United States and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal. IOW, we legalized piracy by the big drug companies.

 

[washunut]

https://www.apnews.com/f44a7baa710d458ca50edd66affc1b91

Ads for prescription drugs appeared 5 million times in just one year, capping a recent surge in U.S. medical marketing, a new analysis found.

The advertisements for various medicines showed up on TV, newspapers, online sites and elsewhere in 2016. Their numbers soared over 20 years as part of broad health industry efforts to promote drugs, devices, lab tests and even hospitals.
==========================================================
Medical marketing reached $30 billion in 2016, up from $18 billion in 1997. And this is paid for by the high prices at the pharmacy, especially for the newer biologic & blood thinner drugs that are not covered by most drug insurance plans.

I recently checked out a sleep drug developed by a Japanese pharma company. Not covered by my Plan D insurance, out-of-pocket cost for 30 days supply of Rozerem is $479, or over $15/day. It is listed as being 1/3 that price from Canadian pharmacies but none have it in stock. Go figure.

The United States and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal. IOW, we legalized piracy by the big drug companies.

Not sure you have shown the correlation between the price of drugs and advertising which is meant to increase USAGE not price.

 

[JacksinPA]

Not sure you have shown the correlation between the price of drugs and advertising which is meant to increase USAGE not price.

The price patients pay for the drug at retail pays for the advertising & things like the free samples that 'detail people' give to doctors.

 

[washunut]

The price patients pay for the drug at retail pays for the advertising & things like the free samples that 'detail people' give to doctors.

Advertising is probably more cost effective than adding detail people. Regardless,neither impacts the price of the drug.

 

[Greenbeard]

The United States and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal. IOW, we legalized piracy by the big drug companies.

Not sure I get the "piracy" aspect of advertising.

 

[markjs]

It's well known that when a patient asks for a drug, American doctors find a reason to prescribe it. None of these are cures, just symptom management, and profitable free guinea pigs. The ads cost money, increase usage (reagrdless of "need"), the companies jack prices to give insane dividends to shareholders (and also pay out the suits for drugs they never properly tested), then they tweak it a little every time it goes to generic, call it "better" charge more, ad infinitum!

There's a reason why this is only legal in two countries. IT's a TERRIBLE idea SOLELY for the benefit of profit, not the patients.:roll:

 

[Hawkeye10]

https://www.apnews.com/f44a7baa710d458ca50edd66affc1b91

Ads for prescription drugs appeared 5 million times in just one year, capping a recent surge in U.S. medical marketing, a new analysis found.

The advertisements for various medicines showed up on TV, newspapers, online sites and elsewhere in 2016. Their numbers soared over 20 years as part of broad health industry efforts to promote drugs, devices, lab tests and even hospitals.
==========================================================
Medical marketing reached $30 billion in 2016, up from $18 billion in 1997. And this is paid for by the high prices at the pharmacy, especially for the newer biologic & blood thinner drugs that are not covered by most drug insurance plans.

I recently checked out a sleep drug developed by a Japanese pharma company. Not covered by my Plan D insurance, out-of-pocket cost for 30 days supply of Rozerem is $479, or over $15/day. It is listed as being 1/3 that price from Canadian pharmacies but none have it in stock. Go figure.

The United States and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal. IOW, we legalized piracy by the big drug companies.

I is not just this $30+ billion of the $3.5 Trillion yearly spending that must be paid for it is more that the ads ramp up usage often wasted because health care providers try to satisfy the whims of their patients, patients who are encouraged to take newer more expensive drugs than they need and also types of drugs that they dont need. I have seen reports that estimate that 40% of the approx $350 billion that we spend on drugs is wasted, and a great deal of that $140 billion/year in wastage is due to the commercials. The commercials thus come at a cost of at least $100 Billion/year...which is real money.

There clearly is no will to deal with this waste problem.

 

[Mr Person]

It's not the only reason.

We also have some of the most demanding requirements for drugs to be sold here. Other countries generally (if not entirely) have lower requirements. If you want to sell in the American market, you need to meet American standards. We also happen to have a massive drug market (partial blame to advertising, yes).

This skews the price of drugs in America vs. the same substances elsewhere.




There's a whole lot more, too.

 

[markjs]

It's not the only reason.

We also have some of the most demanding requirements for drugs to be sold here. Other countries generally (if not entirely) have lower requirements. If you want to sell in the American market, you need to meet American standards. We also happen to have a massive drug market (partial blame to advertising, yes).

This skews the price of drugs in America vs. the same substances elsewhere.




There's a whole lot more, too.

But you do realize there's no real oversight? They do all there own testing and the FDA rubber stamps it. So essentially, they engineer a study to get the desired result, and then when they do, they calll it "safe effective and marketable". No long term studies, no compteting studies, no real independent oversight. The situation is bad under and administration, but with this dog and pony show, you can bet every corner is getting cut to favore big pharma.:roll:

 

[Mr Person]

But you do realize there's no real oversight? They do all there own testing and the FDA rubber stamps it. So essentially, they engineer a study to get the desired result, and then when they do, they calll it "safe effective and marketable". No long term studies, no compteting studies, no real independent oversight. The situation is bad under and administration, but with this dog and pony show, you can bet every corner is getting cut to favore big pharma.:roll:

"No real oversight", he says to the person whose father ran drug development for some companies and always had lots to say about the FDA's oversight...



I know, it's a personal anecdote. Could be talking out of me arse. But my father isn't some liar or some shyster, and neither am I. This is just one of those areas where there is a false prejudice on the left - and I really am "slightly liberal" if you average up my views, not some conservative trying to be cute with my lean - that is popularly spurred on by outliers (or outliars) like that Shkreli swine.

"No long term studies" is one of the most ridiculously false thing I've heard in a very long time. Phase 1-Phase 4 alone takes several years, most commonly. There is a ton of oversight, a ton of hoops, and no matter what gripes (and some are very real) against the FDA they don't involve a some sort of lack of long term studies. Their own site, which no doubt must be called a lie says:

P1: several months. Safety and dosage.
P2: months - 2 years. Efficacy and side-effects
P3: 1-4 years. Efficacy, monitoring of adverse reactions.
P4: undefiniable; requires several thousand volunteers with the disease condition. Safety and efficacy.

https://www.fda.gov/forpatients/approvals/drugs/ucm405622.htm

And those are just general averages. Some take far more. It really depends on the who what when why where how.


"No competing studies"? As in what? What are you envisioning here? A company is testing a propriety experimental drug, usually costing millions or more usually hundreds of millions of dollars over this time frame, and who is going to do a competing study in your view? Should the government match that expenditure to do their own? Who pays? No private company is going to be given some other company's proto-drug and then spend their own money counter-studying it. How in the universe could it ever be a sane business plan to invest all those millions to try to disprove some other company's drug's safety and effectiveness?

I'll put this as polite as possible since we haven't clashed yet: you're talking out of your ass and your intestines are still rumbling ominously.





It's sad. I do appellate criminal defense, and see all sorts of false, stupid, dishonest slander against lawyers-in-general, as always completely contradicting what I've seen in life. My parents both started out as horrendously under-funded university researches, father being a doc and mother a Ph.D. They both ended up going into pharma. They aren't liars. They weren't conspiring to rip off America. Yet both groups are maliciously maligned, just because it's popular. Pharma is evil, lawyers are scum. Two peas in a dishonest **** pod.

The bad actors in Pharma do not represent the industry. And the industry is under no duty to operate like a non-profit. New drugs will be increasingly expensive because they're aimed at smaller and smaller populations. It still costs the same general amount to make the drugs, but there are fewer people from whom the cost can be recouped. The idiotically structured American health-insurance-customer triangular market makes things many times worse. But this is not some tale of Pharma shenanigans across the board, and most certainly no FDA rubber-stamping.

It's so expensive to make a drug specifically BECAUSE of FDA oversight.


Edit: And yeah, you can find a few examples of when the FDA didn't catch something. I forget the name at the moment, but there was some non-opioid painkiller that could rarely contribute to heart issues. That stood out specifically because they didn't catch it, not because it's just the sort of thing that happens a lot.