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The prices of drugs which are advertised on TV.

frankberry

frankberry

Administrator
Staff member
Has anyone noticed the large number of prescription drugs being advertised on TV?
Wonder why?
The next time you see a prescription drug ad, go to www.goodrx.com, enter the name of the drug and check out the prices.
In nearly every case, the drugs are hideously expensive. That's why they are being advertised and why the lower cost drugs are not.
Big pharma wants to push their high-profit drugs.
I don't even understand why they are advertising.
It takes a doctor to prescribe the meds and many doctors (like mine) do not appreciate their patients telling them what to prescribe.
My doctor prescribes what he believes to be the best drug for me.
 
Why are they advertising? They're hoping you are someone who isn't on a lot of medication, but has certain symptoms. They start the ad listing the symptoms. The viewer recognizes the symptoms, and thinks this drug will solve their problem. They go to a doctor and the doctor writes a prescription. The doctor isn't going to seek the cheapest drug first unless that's what you want. Some expensive drugs are covered by insurance. Then it doesn't matter how much the drug costs. You have "big pharma" but there is also "big medical" and "big insurance." In some cases they're all working together. Health care is for-profit. Other countries have non-profit health care. You don't see that kind of advertising there. The president yesterday gave a speech about lowering drug prices. That is not the position of his party. He can talk about lowering prices, but the president doesn't make the laws, Congress does. He cant get his drug plan passed by Congress. So nothing changes.
 
TheBigA said:
Why are they advertising? They're hoping you are someone who isn't on a lot of medication, but has certain symptoms. They start the ad listing the symptoms. The viewer recognizes the symptoms, and thinks this drug will solve their problem. They go to a doctor and the doctor writes a prescription. The doctor isn't going to seek the cheapest drug first unless that's what you want. Some expensive drugs are covered by insurance. Then it doesn't matter how much the drug costs. You have "big pharma" but there is also "big medical" and "big insurance." In some cases they're all working together. Health care is for-profit. Other countries have non-profit health care. You don't see that kind of advertising there. The president yesterday gave a speech about lowering drug prices. That is not the position of his party. He can talk about lowering prices, but the president doesn't make the laws, Congress does. He cant get his drug plan passed by Congress. So nothing changes.
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Also "big pharma" , "big medical" and "big insurance" gotta pay the Venture Capitalist companies in the Financial District and other investment entities on Wall Street too they have to please these people first though.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Also "big pharma" , "big medical" and "big insurance" gotta pay the Venture Capitalist companies in the Financial District and other investment entities on Wall Street too they have to please these people first though.
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Venture capital people and firms generally provide early round financing for start-up companies to help build them up to the point where they can go public; they provide burn capital in exchange for equity.

The drug firms that advertise on TV are almost 100% large pharmaceutical companies which are publicly owned.

As to insurance, many high cost medications that have alternatives are either not covered or have much higher co-payments. The consumer has to make a choice between a $20 co-pay on a generic what can be a several hundred dollar copay on an alternative brand name. Part of the advertising is to get consumers to see some kind of reason to pay more.
 
frankberry said:

I don't even understand why they are advertising.
It takes a doctor to prescribe the meds and many doctors (like mine) do not appreciate their patients telling them what to prescribe.
My doctor prescribes what he believes to be the best drug for me.
Click to expand...

A lot of physicians aren't that honorable.
And because of how insurance works, it isn't necessarily the case that a drug which is cheap for one patient will be cheap for all patients. For doctors, trying to prescribe based on value is a losing proposition. Here's an example of a physician in Kansas who tried that. This physician prescribed a generic COPD inhaler, but was told the patient's particular Medicare Part D plan preferred a much more expensive medication, which would in the end cost the patient less.
 
There's also a period of time after FDA approval that a drug is available with no generic substitute. I believe it's 7 years. When Viagra was first released, there was a lot of TV advertising promoting it, and there was no generic substitute. Of course that period is now over. But some of the drugs you see advertised on TV are in that period where they're trying to build demand for the product.
 
TheBigA said:
There's also a period of time after FDA approval that a drug is available with no generic substitute. I believe it's 7 years. When Viagra was first released, there was a lot of TV advertising promoting it, and there was no generic substitute. Of course that period is now over. But some of the drugs you see advertised on TV are in that period where they're trying to build demand for the product.
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It has more to do with patent rights than FDA approval, and patent rights last 17 years. Viagra's patents expired (IIRC) last year, which is why generics are available now.

But the high cost of brand-name meds is not only because of the requirement to pass the profits onto the venture capitalists, 401K, mutual fund managers, union pension funds -- aka the outfits that own a majority of the stock in many, if not most publicly-traded companies.

Big Pharma also has the right to recoup its development/engineering costs over that 17 years, which can run $100 million per drug or more, not including the overhead costs of building/maintaining of the lab facilities for that development. Not only that, but there are the liability costs, like lots of insurance against lawsuits and the horde of lawyers that each company has to keep on retainer (or on salary) to take care of the inevitable lawsuits.

I'm guessing that advertising costs are a small percentage of the total.
 
Good RX is a pretty good website which you can get drugs for with a coupon it's a racket with drug prices which my meds are the ones that have been on the market for decades. Not the new drugs with all the side effects they mention during the ad's no thank you.
 
Prescription Drug ads need to go the way of tobacco, banned from all but physically printed media. I have no doubt the insane prices are paying for the advertising.

The ads actually have a reverse effect on me. I'm legally blind so I don't see the images they are using to try to entice people. All I hear is the disclaimers that pretty much tell me if I take these pills I am going to die horribly. It definitely doesn't make me likely to go to the doctor to ask about the pills they want me to. It makes me less likely to visit a doctor period cause I'm afraid to put prescription drugs in my body unless I absolutely have to.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/health/drug-prices-tv-ads.html

Here is an update. Yes the President can say anything about drug prices but congress and courts have the final say on how that is done though.

The rule, set to take effect July 9, is one of the most visible efforts by the Trump administration to try to address high drug prices.

Three of the nation’s major drug manufacturers sued the Trump administration on Friday to block a rule that would force them to put the price of their drugs in television advertisements beginning this summer.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., by Merck, Eli Lilly and Amgen, as well as a trade group for advertisers, argues that the rule is illegal because it violates the companies’ First Amendment rights. It also claims that the ad disclosures, which require drug manufacturers to include the list price of any drug that costs more than $35 a month, could mislead consumers because insurers often cover the bulk of a drug’s cost.

“We believe the new requirements may cause patients to decide not to seek treatment because of their perception that they cannot afford their medications, when in fact many patients do not pay anything near list price,” Merck, whose top-selling product is the pricey cancer drug Keytruda, said in a statement.
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Interesting the rule only applies to TV. Lots of drug ads on radio, especially talk radio.

That might lead to a challenge on selective enforcement.
 
I saw a TV news story last weekend that illustrated some of the reasons US drug prices are so high compared with the ROW, especially Canada. The article focused upon Insulin for Type 1 diabetics (a must have drug). Canada sets maximum cap prices on drugs and also permits negotiation (I'm assuming for their Federal health program) - neither are done in the USA. A vial of insulin in the frozen white north costs about $3 to manufacture. South of the border it sells for over $300.

This is nothing but greed and government permitted price fixing. Insulin was discovered over 100 years ago and the original formula was donated free of charge to the drug companies as a public health gesture by its inventors. There are three manufacturers of Insulin so price fixing is pretty easy. It would not take much effort on the part of the government and insurance companies to break up this illegal and immoral activity but they are making money hand over fist.
 
landtuna said:
It would not take much effort on the part of the government and insurance companies to break up this illegal and immoral activity but they are making money hand over fist.
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The Canadian model has been proposed in Congress many times, and the big drug lobby has nipped it in the bud.
 
TheBigA said:
The Canadian model has been proposed in Congress many times, and the big drug lobby has nipped it in the bud.
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Of course they have even though their public pronouncements continue to declare they are devoted to health care as a first priority.
 
landtuna said:
This is nothing but greed and government permitted price fixing. Insulin was discovered over 100 years ago and the original formula was donated free of charge to the drug companies as a public health gesture by its inventors. There are three manufacturers of Insulin so price fixing is pretty easy. It would not take much effort on the part of the government and insurance companies to break up this illegal and immoral activity but they are making money hand over fist.
Click to expand...


Diabetes is my go-to disease/disorder as an example of the failures of the health care system in our country. It is common, incurable, and expensive to treat, even or patients who have insurance. At least one of my co-workers is type 1 diabetic, the insurance our company offers has the highest deductibles allowable under Obamacare, and as a result he pays $7k to $10k a year in health care costs (almost exclusively due to diabetes), on top of the insurance premium.

The bottom line is that there only are a few drugs that would fit under President Trumps now postponed order since you see the same 10 or so drugs advertised repeatedly. Even if President Trump's order came into effect, its price-depressing effect would presumably only touch that small handful of drugs. There is a much broader universe of people, such as diabetes and cancer patients, who could benefit from a broader change to drug pricing.
 
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