The Madness of Modern Medical Marketing

An ad for a prescription medication was playing on TV. I was reading the paper but stopped to glance up at it, even though I had seen it dozens of times before. The voiceover highlighted the drug’s benefits as smiley seniors played with their gleeful grandchildren. Lighthearted music played in the background.

Then, with just a few seconds left, the voiceover switched to listing the most commonly reported adverse events associated with the medication. We’ve all heard these lists of various side effects, but they are still unnerving. The background music should be required to shift to a minor key.

“Could cause serious reactions that can be life-threatening” doesn’t exactly encourage me to queue up for it. Neither does “could cause depression and suicidal thoughts” or “may cause constipation or diarrhea”. My favorite is “don’t take this medication if you are allergic to it”. You’ll have to try it to find out.

I’m not criticizing the medications themselves. In fact, I have a prescription for one of them. I’m just taking issue with the way they are presented. Many of the TV ads I’ve watched still leave me baffled regarding their actual purpose. Maybe that’s intentional so you’ll watch carefully.

If you go to the website for each of these drugs, you’ll see the warnings before you even get to the info about the drug’s benefits. These warnings are often in a black box pop-up window. Magazine ads for these same drugs often show the drug’s benefits on one side of a page with the black box info on the back side in small print.

It’s easy to find the magazine ads since they are usually printed on heavier paper stock. That causes the magazine to automatically open to that page. I recently saw an ad in the middle of a magazine. This ad had two pages of warnings, one on each side of the staples binding the magazine together.

On TV and radio you sometimes hear warnings and disclaimers speeded up. Technology now allows speeded up recordings without sounding like Mickey Mouse. But this is still insulting. I don’t think I’ve heard this in ads for pharmaceuticals as much as I have noticed it in some radio ads for investments. I may be wrong, but I think I’ve heard “you could lose all your money”. Well, sign me right up. They’re probably required to include the disclaimer but playing it at conversational speed must not be.

Have you ever noticed a TV ad for a pharmaceutical that is immediately followed by an ad on how to join a class action lawsuit for failure of that very same product? I’ve actually rewound the DVR to make sure my eyes didn’t deceive me. The ad placements must be randomly scheduled. This is similar to a sunshiny political ad for a candidate followed immediately by a dark and grainy one against the candidate.

Be careful bragging about your knowledge of these pharmaceuticals because they can indicate what you’ve been watching on TV. You can say you saw the ad when watching the national news, but you might be accused of watching reruns of “Wagon Train” or “Gilligan’s Island”.

Only a handful of countries permit these types of “direct-to-consumer” ads and we live in one of them. They are allowed here because of a broad interpretation of free speech. Think you can get all the info you need to decide a med is right for you in a 60-second ad?

The marketing scheme is to get you to ask your doctor about the medication. Now, this isn’t necessarily bad. But don’t come in with a list of every one of them to see what might be good for you. Times have changed and these days you need to make good use of those few expensive minutes you have with your doctor.

Look at the visit as getting a second opinion. You got your first opinion when you consulted Dr. Google on your home or work computer. You are now armed with your list of ailments, possible causes and remedies, including that medication you saw on TV. Make sure you can pronounce it.

Don’t get deflated when your doctor tells you that the miracle drug doesn’t work or would conflict with your current prescriptions. If your doctor refers to Web MD to verify something about the new drug, don’t be alarmed. It’s not easy keeping up with all the new drugs. If, however, your doctor needs to look up answers to basic health questions, that’s another story.

Also realize that the meds you see on TV may never have been prescribed by your doctor. Not because they don’t work but because they are so expensive. Well, someone has to pay for all that advertising. If insurance won’t cover them because of their cost, you probably can’t afford them on your own. 

Doctors may not even mention these meds for the same reasons. That happened to me. I asked about the med I mentioned earlier. Turns out that the doctor said it works very well but is expensive. A little research revealed that my insurance covered it. Hmmm.

These drug ads are much more sophisticated than the ads we grew up with such as for Geritol, Sominex, or Doan’s Pills. The listed risks are what is new. So, go ahead and ask your doctor about them. After all, you’re looking out for yourself.

You want to be a smiley senior, don’t you?