Pharmaceutical Marketing is Good and Here’s Why
Havidol is a new drug that has just been released to treat Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD). Well, that’s what many people thought when visiting the exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York.
“People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real. They didn’t get the fact that this was a parody or satire.”
As most of you reading this know, there is no such thing as DSACDAD, and you can’t really “have it all” with Havidol. The parody is in response to the marketing strategies used by the pharmaceutical industry to sell their products to the public.
Why is pharmaceutical marketing bad? In my opinion, it’s not.
As a physician, you know if a drug is right for a patient. If it’s right, they want it, and they can pay for it – give it to them. And, take any perks that may come along with writing the script.
Before my time, physician perks would include week-long vacations and swank $150 dinners. Now, physicians are stuck with pens and the occasional free lunch during a presentation. That’s nice too, but there are students, residents, and physicians that are trying to get that taken away as well.
The argument is that it “increases prices for consumers.” I’ve also heard “what about the people who can’t afford the new drugs?”
The answer is easy: Health care is a privilege, not a right. If I can’t afford a new drug, you bet your ass I’ll pick up the cheaper variety, even if the side-effects suck a little more. There’s nothing wrong with that. People don’t want to do that, though. Whenever the words ‘health care’ are mentioned, people think they are owed a handout.
For example, on my student rotations some patients would complain about having to pay for medications. They would spend $6 to support a 2-pack per day habit, yet complain about having to drop $20 on their prescription. Unfortunately, this is more common than you think. It’s not the pharmaceutical industry that has it wrong, it’s the consumer.
Just like any business, the pharmaceutical industry has to turn a profit in order to continue manufacturing drugs. To aid in turning a profit, they increase awareness of their products through mainstream marketing channels. Take away that profit and you take away the drive for drug development and the continued retail sale of pharmaceuticals.
via: [Reuters]
It’s all just dandy until a patient comes in demanding a drug. Then the resposible doctor:
(a) says no, and subsequently loses the patient to someone who will prescribe the drug (losing the income from that patient in the process), or
(b) prescribes the drug (not so responsible now) and sends the patient on their way with a prescription with all sorts of side effects the patient doesn’t want. The side effects which they will then sue the doctor for causing because they didn’t really need the drug.
Of course scenario (a) only matters if the doctor would really lose patients. But hey, why force that situation on the physician. Don’t they have to deal with enough patients acting like idiots.
If the drug company’s products are effective, they will be prescribed more than the competition and the company will make money. So the company is behooved to create new and effective drugs to beat the competition, the company can save all that money from advertising and dump it into R&D.
Good post Justin. You’re right, if the drugs work they will beat the competition naturally and will get prescribed more often, increasing revenues and profitability for the pharmaceutical company. I think one of the reasons for aggressive marketing is to increase awareness about new drugs immediately.
Without this awareness, the companies will possibly lose money waiting for the drug to “catch on” … that is if the drug is any good to begin with.
i agree with what you’re trying to say, but it’s grossly oversimplified. of course drug marketing can be bad if drug companies are making up new medical conditions just to make a buck, and are using aggressive marketing campaigns to mislead both patients and doctors(nexium, vioxx, drugs for menopause).
i think HAVIDOL is brilliant and asks the right questions. big pharma hasn’t had much success in developing life-saving drugs recently, which is why it resorted marketing gimmickry.
I agree JP. Havidol was an excellent idea and really did show just how much of an influence the “cheesy” marketing strategies have on consumers.
I agree with you. Now I will tell you a story.
Years ago when dinosaurs were roaming the earth (1992,) a drug came out to help people destress. I was a college student and the drug type was new. I was 21 and going through a divorce and went to a psych prof and asked him who would give it to me. He said he wouldn’t tell me, “In six months you will be taking drugs to combat the side effects of the side effects and be on fifteen drugs. Sign up for yoga this semester and if you still want the drug in three months, I will tell you who to see.” I cried and and he not only wouldn’t tell me who to see, he said that he’d be very upset with me if I went to Dr. _____, another prof, who would tell me who to see to get it because the Dr. ______ thought the drug was great.
I just resumed college and saw that professor who’d not give me the name of a docto who’d give me the drug and he laughed when I told him that I am still doing yoga and never took the drug or any in it’s genre. (That prof is into biofeedback.) Now of course with the particular drug that I’d wanted that seemed like such an easy fix is now associated with possible suicide and other issues. The other prof wound up getting sick on the side effects of the side effects of the same drug and my mentor wound up getting him also hooked on yoga.
What are your thoughts on drug research?
Drug research is great, as is pharmaceutical marketing. Pharma marketing is a necessary means to maintain profitability for the big pharm companies.
Research is a necessary factor in the drug life cycle, and this research costs a considerable amount of money. Much of this money is made back (and then some in order to profit) through awareness created in drug marketing campaigns.
Some people think that healthcare is a human right (at least the UN declaration of human rights seems to think so) and do not think that people should be given different access to care because of their economic status. If an 8 year old is born in to a poor family should he be given access to medicine based on his parents income? Is he not working as hard as the white suburban kid up the road whose better schooling (via property taxes), supportive, crime free environment will land him a job as a pundit of medicine.