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Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

arstechnica.com

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Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#281

Post by refurb »

chrisan wrote: post #216
refurb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if your drug is the best, doctors should use it anyway Amazingly that is untrue. Doctors have to know that it's the best drug and they often don't. Doctors are often creatures of habit. If I gave my last patient Crestor and it lowered their cholesterol, why not try the same with the next patient?

> Amazingly that is untrue. Doctors have to know that it's the best drug and they often don't. Doctors are often creatures of habit. If I gave my last patient Crestor and it lowered their cholesterol, why not try the same with the next patient? What you need is a clinical pharmacist not an advertisement. I am perhaps biased as my wife is a clinical pharmacist and one of her biggest things is to make the doctors use e…

Thanks for sharing that. I think you summed it up nicely. Physicians do have a need for information about new drugs. They simply don't have the time to do the research themselves. That said, the crux of the argument is around how that information is transmitted. DTC seems less than ideal which I can understand.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#282

Post by pinaceae »

aianus wrote: post #214
pinaceae wrote: post #187

only the US and NZ allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. let that sink in a bit. from germany to japan to ghana to timor leste - everyone else has disagreed on this approach.

Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy. Only Uruguay has legal marijuana, doesn't make illegal marijuana a fantastic public policy.

everyone agrees jumping from the roof of a 6 story building will hurt - but please go ahead, try your debate theory against it.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#283

Post by morgante »

dools wrote: post #261
hammock wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of wanting to ban Rx drug ads because they are creepy, is that it was regulations that made them creepy to begin with. (You seem aware of this already) There is an argument to be made for consumer advertising for a drug like Viagra. Without awareness that an effective treatment exists, patients with ED or another embarrassing condition are not likely to bring it up with their doctor on their own, thus resul…

We don't have ads for this in Australia, and everyone knows about viagra. Ads for drugs aren't creepy, they're fucking crazy. When I watched hulu for a bit I was astonished by them fascinated. Terrified. The US is wild west capitalism EDIT: And another thing: you guys don't even have affordable health care, so people see this shit they blatantly can't afford advertised at them relentlessly. That's why spam is so lucr…

> they blatantly can't afford advertised at them relentlessly.

That's not true, because most people do have insurance. The major problem is that the costs are socialized by insurance, so people buy excessive healthcare because then can afford it (they aren't paying).

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#284

Post by akg_67 »

I wonder if HN community reaction would have been different if the headline was "Doctors want ban on access to information to general public on prescription drug and device."

This community sees the word "advertisement" and flips out. I guess health insurance and medical special interest groups did their homework on how to phrase the argument in their favor.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#285

Post by wpietri »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #95
wpietri wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The data doesn't care whether or not you see the logic behind it. This is true only if corporate executives are amoral automatons running hill-climbing algorithms. Rather than, say, citizens who use logic to make responsible decisions not just for their short-term profits but for the long-term good of their community.

Corporations care a great deal more about short term profit in general.

Corporations don't care about anything. The people running them do, as do the people working in them. Those are the morally responsible actors here.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#286

Post by nitrogen »

hsuresh wrote: post #271
nsxwolf wrote: post #93

These ads are one of the main reasons I became a cord cutter. I'm very happy they have not yet followed me onto any of the streaming services I use. They are the creepiest thing ever on television. The actors sit around dinner tables with family members speaking unnatural, FDA manipulated dialog ("Oh, I'm doing great, I've been taking Pradaxa for my afib, not caused by a heart valve problem!") Then you get the unendi…

I am new here in US, and I was shocked to see ads for sleeping pills on kids channels (Cartoon Network, iirc). Unbelievable.

Was it at night? Last time I checked (years ago), Cartoon Network is not a kids channel at night.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#287

Post by rodgerd »

nsxwolf wrote: post #93

These ads are one of the main reasons I became a cord cutter. I'm very happy they have not yet followed me onto any of the streaming services I use. They are the creepiest thing ever on television. The actors sit around dinner tables with family members speaking unnatural, FDA manipulated dialog ("Oh, I'm doing great, I've been taking Pradaxa for my afib, not caused by a heart valve problem!") Then you get the unendi…

> They are the creepiest thing ever on television.

Most perfectly satarised in Robocop. Which looks, every year, more and more like it's being used as a road map.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#288

Post by rodgerd »

joshuaheard wrote: post #10

I'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…

> The first rule of sales is to pitch the decision maker.

McDonalds advertise at children so they'll harrass their parents into buying crappy food. Drug companies advertise to encourage people to harrass their doctors for prescriptions.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#289

Post by mrweasel »

nsxwolf wrote: post #93

These ads are one of the main reasons I became a cord cutter. I'm very happy they have not yet followed me onto any of the streaming services I use. They are the creepiest thing ever on television. The actors sit around dinner tables with family members speaking unnatural, FDA manipulated dialog ("Oh, I'm doing great, I've been taking Pradaxa for my afib, not caused by a heart valve problem!") Then you get the unendi…

>These ads are one of the main reasons I became a cord cutter.

These ads are also an important source of revenue for the networks. The TV stations are going to fight this as much as the drug companies will, if not more.

As you point to, some of these ads are long and long means expensive. I don't see how the networks won't fight this.

If it becomes illegal to advertise drugs to consumers, the interesting thing won't be what the drug companies does (they'll just target the doctors and save a ton of money). The interesting thing will be what TV will do to make up for lost revenue.

Re: Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

#290

Post by wildmusings »

anonymous30 wrote: post #193
slr555 wrote: post #81

Doctors are very good at keeping tabs on earnings of others but have no limits on the estimates of their own value. We in turned are conditioned to respect doctors as the vessels which carry the whole of healthcare. Nothing could be further from the truth. Talk to a very large percentage of doctors outside the office and you find that money is there bottom line. They're all for tort reform so you can't recover a larg…

Absolutely. US doctors have the highest income in the world. Even our supposedly underpaid GPs have higher salaries than specialists in almost every other country. And the public accepts it, even defends it! Yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

Health outcomes are determined by more factors than the quality of medical care. Obesity (and it's bed fellow diabetes), sedentary lifestyles, drinking & drugs, etc. Given current medical knowledge and technology, no medical system can undo the harm caused by those cultural factors. Doctors' advice is just that, advice that you are free to ignore.

Even more specific metrics can be misleading. E.g. we know that cancer patients are more likely to be cured in the US than in Europe, but there's enough confounding factors to muddle any conclusions. It could be that earlier detection in the US leads to treatment for a cancer that would have gone into remission on its own and never been detected by doctors in another country. Or it could be that US cancer care is superior.

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