Megan McArdle is subbing for Glenn Reynolds, and posts on pharmaceutical advertising expenses here.

First, I have to respond - that argument assumes that all doctor-oriented advertising for medication is an unalloyed public good, which is not necessarily the case. Obviously, the intent of such advertising (even that which involves giving free samples to doctors) is to encourage those doctors to prescribe that medication to their patients more often. Thus, the advertising is only good to the extent that said increase in prescriptions meets the patients' needs. It has no effect when the medication only performs as well as another brand-name drug, and a negative effect when the doctor prescribes that medication in lieu of an older-but-effective generic medication or a non-medication treatment, or when the patient fails to respond to the medication.

It's like a doctor writing an antibiotic prescription when you have the flu. It cannot possibly cure what ails you. It's actually bad to take antibiotics when you don't need them - the risk of a pathogen developing antibiotic resistance and knocking you (and everyone you spread it to) flat on your ass is small, but present. And shoot, you could just as soon not spend the money!

I'm hardly anti-medication; better living through chemistry is fine by me. But all that advertising isn't being done to inform doctors about new medicines, and it's not just promoting the best ones; it's encouraging doctors to prescribe certain medications over other ones with the same effect (or for conditions where they wouldn't have prescribed one before.) We shouldn't kid ourselves and say that there's no distortion of medical outcomes going on.

I could expand this post into "what's wrong with pharmaceuticals in the US" and further into "health care in the US in general", but I need to work on Aika instead. Serious policy discussion and excessive panty shots don't go together well in the same thought process...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 07:38 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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