Is it just me? Or does anyone else find it aggravating that drug companies spend millions of dollars advertising Celebrex, Procrit, Lipitor, Nexium, Zoloft, etc. to the general public. Since the general public can't write prescriptions, all they can do is try to persuade their doctors to prescribe what may well be unsuitable. Doctors have enough problems without having to cope with hypoochondriacs second guessing them so that the drug companies can increase their already obscene profits.

frank,
my girlfriends dad works in advertizing, and she is interning at the health care advertizing part of that firm now, so the other night i had a similar conversation with them.

U do know that unless you ask for a certain product by name from you doctor (usually) that they will give you a brand of that drug that they are paid to, or have incentives to prescribe.

of course doctors arent going to prescribe something to the person that will not help them, or that wont work as well as another brand,
but i think that the advertizing helps the companies be competitive.

Some doctors (unless you ask) will probably prescribe you the med. that they have incentives to prescribe even if they think the other one might work just a little bit better.
so it is just fair that people know what is out there.

but i do agree that the advertizing is kind of weird, such as, have you seen the ads that dont tell you what the drug does???
its because if they tell you what it does or cures or something like that then they also have to list all the side effects, so if by not listing the effects, then they dont have to list the side effects that may be better for their ads, such as viagra, you might notice that they never say what it is for, but they dont have to cuz everyone knows, and it works out better for them.

the advertizing/health buisness is very complicated and i dont even pretend to comprehend it all, but i hope that some of this helps explain your problems with the drug companies.
-chris

As a physician, I can tell you that the situations in which there is financial incentive to prescribe a particular drug, especially your implication that we are paid to do so, are virtually non-existant. In fact, there are more and more ways in which it is better to prescribe the least expensive drug: which is exactly why the push by drug companies to advertise. Since doctors are finally wising up to cost-consciousness, the drug companies are counting on patients to insist that their doctors prescribe name brands. By advertising, they get people to ask for drugs by name, and puts the doctor in the position of trying to talk a patient out of it, which they may not like to do. The money is in it for the companies, not the prescribing doctor.

sid you probably have more experience than i do with this because you are a doctor,
but i was told that drug companies DO offer incentives to doctors to prescribe certain drugs, im not exactly saying you are PAID to prescribe them, but more like the more you prescribe them, then the company will lower the cost for you to buy the meds, so the more you sell, the less it costs you, and the more you make,
and when i say YOU i dont mean you personally sid, because as you have said, you dont do that, but this is what i have heard about other doctors.

I have to agree with Sid1114. First of all, it seems to me that doctors already know what drugs are available and don't need to be informed via TV advertising.
Secondly, do you really think that your doctor would prescribe the wrong medicine because of an incentive? What if that wrong medicine caused serious problems, or death? The lawsuit would be bigger than the incentive.
As far as brands go, that is all they are, brands. The drug is still the same, for example, I take Prednisone and Deltasone, same thing, different mgs. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, and I see adds all the time for drugs that are for various types of arthritis, some don't work for RA, so my Dr. wouldn't prescribe them for me.
I understand that the cost of drugs is outrageous, one that I take is &150.00 a dose--I take it twice a week, and for now my insurance covers it. I am on this drug only after other drugs have failed, and in many cases, that's how it works. It is called step procedure- or something like that. Even though my doctor wanted to prescribe Enbrel, the insurance company said I had to first try a series of other drugs before I could go on Enbrel. So, much of what is prescribed, and why is due to insurance companies and out of the hands of our doctors.

i never said that they would prescribe you the wrong med and harm you.
I just said that they(the ones that have incentives) will always recomend a certain drug first, before the other ones.

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibc14:


Some doctors (unless you ask) will probably prescribe you the med. that they have incentives to prescribe even if they think the other one might work just a little bit better.
so it is just fair that people know what is out there.

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sorry, I thought that is what you meant in this post.

BibC14 said --:"so it is just fair that people know what is out there"

Ijust don't think that is their reason for advertising, although it sounds altruistic.

Here is what Dr. Sid said:"the drug companies are counting on patients to insist that their doctors prescribe name brands. By advertising, they get people to ask for drugs by name, and puts the doctor in the position of trying to talk a patient out of it"

Now, why do you suppose they would do that?

Could the high cost of advertising possibly have an effect on the cost of the drugs?
Possibly some of our Canadian members could enlighten us as to how much of this advertising of prescription drugs goes on in Canada. I'm curious as to why the same medicines cost so much less there than in the U.S.

I don't agree with advertising for prescription drugs at all, appart from in specific journals which are for health care professionals, such as The Lancet. Fortunately here in Ireland, prescription drugs are not allowed to be advertised to the geenral public, and I think that is a good thing. I thing we should all be informes patients and do some of our own research, but unless you are a professional, there is no way you could know which prscription drug is best for you.

most about these ads is that most of the time, the ads don't even mention what the medication is for!

I think that pharmaceutical companies should stop airing commercials, and concentrate their marketing efforts on the doctors that are going to prescribe these medications...what good does it do to advertise something that only your doctor can prescribe anyway!

Seems to me that if they didn't spend hundreds of thousands on advertising, maybe our prescription costs could be held down!

If it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. As I said above, the fact is that it induces people to demand drugs by name from their doctors, and many doctors will accede rather than get in a wrestling match with their patients.

it's probably politics!!!!!everything else seem to be.!!!!!