ENCORE #158! – “Hey! Get This Prescription Drug From Your Doctor!!!!!”

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in October of 2017…

Recently, I saw this commercial on TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFpSmeSYydM

It was advertising Neulasta – the drug my wife was given after her aggressive chemo treatments. (https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2019/05/encore-108-neulasta-whats-it-do-plus.html)

Most of you have noticed that in recent years, prescription drug ads have started popping up on TV. In fact, they are doing MORE than just “popping up”. According to the article I referenced above, there are “80 drug commercials every hour of every day on television.” Really? Now, I’m sure that includes Aleve, Bayer, and the host of others, like Prevagen (which supposedly increases memory retention in adults (and which is, sadly, seems to be aimed specifically at patients and family of Alzheimer’s patients). However, how many of us are getting tired of the Humira – which can, apparently, treat ulcerative colitis, plaque psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn’s Disease? I see THAT one constantly!

Also, the multiple alternatives to the diabetic injections my wife took of Lantis – Toujeo, touting how fabulous it is compared to the first one. There ARE other versions of insulin – 37 of them here (https://www.drugs.com/drug-class/insulin.html).

What the fart? Why would they do this? The answer is very simple: $$$MONEY$$$.

According to this article, which was written six years ago, “For every dollar spent on ads for drugs, over four dollars in retail sales are garnered. A May 2011 study showed that new drugs that feature direct-to-consumer advertising are prescribed nine times more than their new counterparts that lack consumer advertising.”

Currently: “In 2012, spending for pharmaceutical TV ads was the 12th-largest category. By last year [2016], drug ads were sixth…” As well: “In 2016, the top three ads based on total spending were Lyrica, with $313 million in spending; rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira at $303 million; and Eliquis, a treatment for a type of heart arrhythmia, at $186 million, according to Kantar.”

While the drug lobby argues that it’s “educating consumers”, I have no doubt that they are giggling behind their hands while reviewing their bank deposits on their laptops at night in their multi-million dollar mansions…I suspect that while Congress battles itself over health care programs, the Health Care Industry is doubled over in hysterical laughter at their cleverness in shifting the focus off of them and to the evils of being Republican or being Democrat.

“The cost of Lyrica…is about $400 for 60 capsules, for example. Critics say the ads encourage patients to ask their doctors for expensive, often marginal — and sometimes inappropriate — drugs that are fueling spiraling health care spending.”

We all know exactly what happened to drug companies who hiked the cost of the pen-delivered epinephrine (https://www.consumerreports.org/drug-prices/epipen-alternative-that-costs-just-10-dollars/), right?

Nothing. The story disappeared from the news as soon as the Democrats and Republicans started fighting about health care. And South Korea. And terrorism…strange, that, eh?

How about Martin Shkreli? He’s NOT being tried for hiking the price of an AIDS treatment drug from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill (paid for by insurance companies who then hiking insurance premiums…); he’s going to go to prison for defrauding his ALREADY fabulously wealthy investors. Not REAL people, but the glitzy-fritzy Rodeo Drive set. NOT for allowing those disgusting AIDS patients to die, but for making his investors have to dig out a bit more pocket change for that pearl-handled, battery-powered, mini-Maserati for the grammar school graduate…

Does this disgust you as much as it does me? I have no trouble with funding the research that CREATES new and effective drugs. I have all kinds of trouble with the Top-Of-The-Heap executives who profit while riding on the backs of normal people who have normal jobs in the companies that produce these drugs.

You know what I’m gonna do about it?

Continue to pay. Continue to watch TV. Pray that Jesus comes to take us Home soon…

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg