Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs
This documentary, released in 2005, examines the impact of Big Pharmaceutical's on health and health care delivery in the United States. Despite being released over 10 years ago, the drug companies continue to have the same approach to health care. Through marketing, branding, relationships with doctors, influence in politics, and presence in the medical education, this billion-dollar industry continues to drive prescription use as a health care outcome.
By spending billions on advertising to encourage consumption, America has quickly become the leading (by far) consumer of pharmaceutical drugs. For context, in 2005 the amount of money spent advertising one cholesterol drug, Vioxx, was more than was spent on both Budweiser and Pepsi in that same year.
America, about 5% of the total world's population, consumes almost 50% of the world's pharmaceutical drugs.
In America, adverse reactions to properly prescribed prescription drugs is the 5th leading killer of Americans, with over 100,000 people dying annually. And are we getting better health outcomes because of the use of these drugs? No, because the drug is not intended to address the root health problem, it is intended to blur the symptoms while the pill is working. This is because, as an industry, it is driven by profit just like all industries. If the industry creates a medicine that cures the health problem, they lose a customer. If they create a bill that provides temporary relief but does not cure the problem, they have life-long customers.
No pharmaceutical advertisement on television will tell you that fact. Check out this documentary to see how it all works.
No comments:
Post a Comment