70% of drugs advertised on TV are less effective than others on the market

[thewayne]

They are described as being of "low therapeutic value", i.e., less effective. So basically the drug companies are trying to sucker you into brow-beating your doctor into prescribing stuff that you saw on TV - which is going to be non-generic and much more expensive - and it is likely to be less effective than other drugs on the market.

Yeah.

So what we've got here is the pharma industry KNOWING that the drug isn't very effective, but they figure that if they put a lot of money into advertising on TV and in magazines that they can shift enough units to work towards recovering costs before the doctors find out it's less effective and start saying "No, I will not prescribe that. Here are more effective alternatives for that condition."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/most-prescription-drugs-advertised-on-tv-are-of-low-benefit-study-finds/

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/18/2122237/70-of-drugs-advertised-on-tv-are-of-low-therapeutic-value-study-finds

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are only two countries IN THE WORLD that allow such advertising of drugs: the USA and New Zealand! How the Kiwis were suckered into doing this, I do not know. But as chained to corporate profits as we are, I don't think this will ever change. For me, this is one of the reasons why the mute button on the remote was invented: if I can't skip the commercial, at least I can silence it.

Comments

[warriorsavant]

Not permitted in Canada (or most countries), but some spill over, usually broadcast, or print media, or people visiting US. I tend to automatically refuse to prescribe it on principal; interesting study about their being less effective (but not surprising).

In addition to my reflex refusal, much of it wouldn't be paid for by either government or private insurance plans here anyhow. Example, biological agents for psoriasis, although quite effective, are also quite expensive, and no one is going to pay for those for mild psoriasis. In fact, won't pay for more severe psoriasis unless you've shown (a) how severe it is, and (b) that older, cheaper agents failed. At one point, you could then get the agency that the company hired to do the paperwork, but in the past year, Quebec medicare (if they pay for it) have stopped allowing that to happen. I (which is to say my nurse, T, as my agent) has to fill in an on-line request.

[thewayne]

My last really big insurance fight was when my pharmacy benefit manager wanted to take me off my antibody drug, which I'd been on for a decade with zero adverse effects, and switch me to a different one to save the PBM money.  We fought that hard and won, kudos to my immunologist's staff.  In the middle of the pandemic, no less!  While they're both antibody drugs and roughly the same, the IgA values were tremendously higher in the new ones they wanted me to use and we didn't want to risk problems.

[warriorsavant]

Sounds like switch to “Biosimilars” here. So far, mostly gov’t plan requiring that, but private insurers starting to follow. My impression (impression only, not hard fact) is that they don’t always work as well. Might be nocebo effect, but have had a few that failed after switching.