Last week, a Congressional committee properly raked Big Pharma over the coals for misleading advertising of pharmaceuticals.
A hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee focused on advertising campaigns for three drugs, including the remarkable case of Robert Jarvik. Jarvik is featured in endlessly re-run ads for Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor. Known as the inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, he is not a cardiologist, not a licensed medical doctor and not authorized to prescribe pharmaceuticals. He's shown in the ads engaged in vigorous rowing activity, but in fact he doesn't row. Pfizer pulled the ads in February after controversy started brewing.
Among industrialized countries, only the United States and New Zealand permit drug companies to market directly to consumers. It's a bad idea, it drives bad medicine, and it should be banned.
But although it has the highest profile, direct-to-consumer advertising is a small part of Pharma's marketing machine.
READ MORE @ CORP WATCH
Showing posts with label consumers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumers. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2008
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Patients Use Less Medicine When They Must Pay More, Study Finds
Patients use fewer prescription drugs when they have to pay more for the medicines, according to research that suggests shifting health-care costs to consumers may lead to more serious illness over time.
Consumers spend 2 to 6 percent less on the drugs for every 10 percent increase in out-of-pocket costs, according to a review of 132 studies released today by the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica, California-based public policy institute.
Companies seeking to hold the line on health-care spending are requiring employees to pay higher deductibles for insurance or offering co-insurance plans that split costs. A study this year in the journal Health Affairs found consumers may spend $440.8 billion out of pocket in 2016, 76 percent more than in 2006. More study is needed to determine if such increases will cause consumers to skip necessary treatment, researchers said.
``For patients with certain chronic illnesses, when you increase cost sharing on the pharmacy side, you end up with more hospitalizations and more use of emergency departments,'' said Dana Goldman, the study's lead author and Rand's director of health economics, in a telephone interview yesterday. The research was presented today in the Journal of the American Medical Association
READ MORE @ BLOOMBERG NEWS
Consumers spend 2 to 6 percent less on the drugs for every 10 percent increase in out-of-pocket costs, according to a review of 132 studies released today by the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica, California-based public policy institute.
Companies seeking to hold the line on health-care spending are requiring employees to pay higher deductibles for insurance or offering co-insurance plans that split costs. A study this year in the journal Health Affairs found consumers may spend $440.8 billion out of pocket in 2016, 76 percent more than in 2006. More study is needed to determine if such increases will cause consumers to skip necessary treatment, researchers said.
``For patients with certain chronic illnesses, when you increase cost sharing on the pharmacy side, you end up with more hospitalizations and more use of emergency departments,'' said Dana Goldman, the study's lead author and Rand's director of health economics, in a telephone interview yesterday. The research was presented today in the Journal of the American Medical Association
READ MORE @ BLOOMBERG NEWS
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