Reactions To “Pharma’s Nine Words”

May 15th, 2017 by Tom Lynch

We received a lot of thoughtful feedback to last week’s post on drug company Direct To Consumer (DTC) television advertising. I thought I’d share a couple that are representative of the whole.

This from a doctor in Florida:

You have acutely illustrated the challenge that allopathic physicians now battle with every day. In short, big Pharma has found a way to circumnavigate the drug salesperson and physician and go directly to the end consumer
Every physician feels significant pressure to satisfy their patients even when the request for certain pharmaceuticals is unreasonable; if the patient walks out of your office empty-handed chances are they won’t come back, so at the very least most patients have some prescription in hand upon their exit.

And this from a C-Suite Chief of Marketing:

I must confess upfront that I was one of those “DTC advertisers” in the early 2000s, having worked with Eli Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer to name a few former clients.

Over the years I’ve read conflicting studies on DTC’s effectiveness and impact.  This said, there is typically a relationship between the largest category spender and market share.

You may also be interested in a dated survey from the FDA on the subject.  While there are definitely some “pro’s” associated with these efforts, including but not limited to patient empowerment (more prepared for doctor’s appointment, asking thoughtful questions, generally being more involved in one’s health, and better conversations about one’s condition and possible treatments). But there are also some “con’s,” including but not limited to:  overpromises/over statements of a drug’s potential benefits (and a corresponding downplay of possible side effects); pressure on physician’s part to prescribe a patient-requested drug, among others.  (But let’s not forget that there were physicians who were also in pharma’s pockets long before DTC, prescribing certain drugs based on lucrative relationships with companies.  Certainly not all of them… but unfortunately there were – and likely still are – some “bad apples.”)

It will be interesting to see how this debate evolves as baby boomers age.  Let’s hope that the patient is the ultimate winner here!

We can all agree with that last bit about hoping the “patient is the ultimate winner.”

We welcome responsible, thoughtful comments from our readers.

 

 

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