Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
arstechnica.com
Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
1–10 of 329 posts
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#2What rubbish! Let speech be free, and let people make up their own minds about things.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#3What rubbish! Let speech be free, and let people make up their own minds about things.
Agreed! Bring back the cigarette commercials.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#4Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#5What rubbish! Let speech be free, and let people make up their own minds about things.
I'm a doctor, and very into free speech, but the problem here is that in healthcare, patients' choices are paid with other people money.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#6I would support such a ban. But mostly so that watching the nightly news without being able to skip commercials would be more palatable.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#7There's a part of me that wants to agree completely...and there is another part that has concerns about the messenger.
The end result of that would be that the gatekeeper to knowing about these drugs or devices are the doctor's themselves meaning those companies just have to work harder to advertise to the doctors to recommend their drug/device.
From Last Week Tonight w/ John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQZ2UeOTO3I
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#8Key question for digital health / biotech startups is whether direct to consumer (D2C) advertising for testing services (e.g. genetic carrier screening; cancer risk screening) would be included.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#9This is an issue for both doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors hate it because patients may want a drug that's not optimal for them (but I saw if on TV) and it's bad for pharmaceuticals because they've had to become marketing machines, investing massive amounts of money into advertising and sales apps.
The biggest issue with an outright ban is consumer education. Someone, something, or some organization needs to be responsible for properly communicating and educating consumers on a drug, its benefits, and its negatives. It needs to be educational, supplemental, and neutral.
Stuff like this does exist for cancer drugs but should spread to other drug areas as well.
Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements
#10I've never understood the logic behind prescription drug ads. The first rule of sales is to pitch the decision maker. You can't buy prescription drugs without a doctor's authorization, so basically the ads are asking people to go beg their doctors for medicine they may, or may not, need. The doctor, in turn, may give in to the patient's emotional pleas, since they are, in effect, in a customer service business. This would be an ethical violation. This rule would remove the ethical temptation of doctors
Further, it will be nice not to hear about an erection lasting over 4 hours, and not being too old for sex, in front of my 11 year old daughter while watching the news after dinner.
From a policy perspective, since the patients are not usually paying for the meds (you and I do), it makes sense to keep demand and prices low, as the doctors assert.
As for the free market, we do not have a free market in medicine. It is highly regulated through insurance and government regulation. So, I don't see a problem there.