Ask Your Doctor

The pharma industry in the United States has advertising spending well over $6.5 Billion a year (since 2018). Pharma is the fourth-largest spender on TV ads in the country, after retail, financial & real estate and technology.

Maybe I’m watching too much television at home this week. I might overdose on detective Monk, Dateline secrets, Jeopardy or whatever is on. Having invested a chunk of my career lifetime in the advertising business I’m scratching my head though. How can big pharma believe that the billions of dollars invested in prescription drugs is worth the money. (I can only assume that they are raking in so much cash that they have no choice but to throw it at the heavily legislated mass media channels that used to be dominated by packaged goods.)

It's a little frightening. In the past week alone the commercial breaks in my viewing are filled with the alphabet soup of product names that, to me, feel made up. (VERZENIO,TRULICITY, DUPIXENT, KISQALI, KESIMPTA, ENTYVIO, COSENTYX, VRAYLAR, RYBELSUS, ZEPOSIA, MAVYRET, TREMFAYA, NYVGART, ULTOMIRIS, PAXLOVID, OTEZLA, CAPLYTA, REXULTI, SKYRIZI. ENTRESTO. RINVOQ, LYBALVI, JARDIANCE and on and on. These are real products yikes.)

With apologies to those people who might depend on these drugs I am sure that I am not alone in blanking out on most of the messaging except the horrible warnings of consequences of taking these products could cause. It just doesn’t seem worth it. I am a bad customer, I know, because I don’t even take over the counter (OTC) solutions. I guess I’m not a good prospect, especially when the broadcast commands me to ASK YOUR DOCTOR about Breast Cancer, RMS, releaf/remission of something, UC, Migraine, Arthritis, Hep C, Diabetes, Bipolar, Depression, Crohn’s Disease, Heart Failure, Schitzophrenia, Diarrhea, Vomitting, Nausea… I hope my doctor can answer all of those questions.

Do we really need all that medical influence peddling? I think not.