Last week, representatives from the drug industry trade group PhRMA met with the House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigations panel to discuss the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) advertising practices by America’s pharmaceutical companies. The Pharmaceutical Industry has been under fire for misleading the public in their DTC commercials.
It is initially appealing to hear that PhRMA is under the gun for showering the public with cartoons of a happy population well-medicated by their products. However, I have increasingly become uneasy with this focus. It is not just me. MDs are also increasingly ambivalent. According to preliminary findings from a survey of 500 physicians, 41% said the fact that a patient saw an advertisement made for a better discussion about treatment. Additionally, 82% reported that seeing the advertisement did not cause problems in the patient-physician relationship.
What causes me the most discomfort is that patients respond to these ads because they have unmet needs. They are not being conned into a medication for which there is no disease. They respond because until they saw the ads, they were unaware of any better option for their restless leg syndrome, insomnia, or persistent allergies.
Americans are the most unhealthy health-obsessed population in the world. We hungrily seek information on how to improve our health. The only groups taking the charge of providing that information are those motivated by profit.
I do not think that PhRMA is to blame for that (but they absolutely should be held accountable to present real facts about their products). I believe that if there is a deficit of information. How can this be? The world is increasingly connected.
An argument can be made that this is due to the fact that those who have a dispassionate knowledge of these conditions and their treatments have left an informational void. This should be remedied. For example, we could have:
- Improved access to physicians. If patients could email, call, or text their MDs, they would likely rely on that communication more than television.
- More time in the office. We all know 15 minutes is not enough.
- Organized distribution of health information aimed at patients... it does not matter if by website, TV, publications. The web is a good start, but only 50%-60% of people in the U.S. have computers and even fewer may know where to go.
Rather than blaming PhRMA, we need to investigate why DTC has had such an impact. That is when we find that our system has failed us again.
interesting points!
Posted by: withyou | July 21, 2008 at 09:46 AM