DTC ads fill a need they don't create one
Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country. According to the article from the Journal;
Robert Epstein, chief medical officer at Medco, Franklin Lakes, N.J., said he sees bad news and good in the findings."Honestly, a lot of it is related to obesity," he said. "We've become a couch-potato culture [and] it's a lot easier to pop a pill" than to exercise regularly or diet.
On the good side, he said, researchers have turned what used to be fatal diseases into chronic ones, including AIDS, some cancers, hemophilia and sickle-cell disease.
Yet he noted the biggest jump in use of chronic medications was in the 20- to 44-year-old age group -- where it rose 20% over the six years. That was mainly due to more use of drugs for depression, diabetes, asthma, attention-deficit disorder and seizures.
Our healthcare system bears a lot of the responsibility for the current state of the health of Americans in this country. There was a time when a physician had time to sit with patients and advise them on life style changes that could improve their health. I still remember my father coming home from the doctors office with booklets on diet changes and recommendations on get healthy. Now if you spend more than 20 minutes with your doctor you are lucky. Physicians treat medical conditions not patients.
Of course we, patients, bear a lot of responsibility as well. We HAVE become a nation of couch potatoes who find it easier to take a pill than adjust our diets. It comes down to not having enough time to cook healthy meals as more and more families have to have two wage earners to make ends meet. The traditional "mom stays at home and cooks dinner" family maybe a thing of the past and people use food as a reward for the daily struggles of living in our informational based economy.
The drug companies, with DTC ads, are only filling a basic marketing need. To inform and educate people on both dangerous conditions and treatment options. If the need to treat was NOT there surely there would not be a need for these medications.
What is needed, if we are to reverse the "couch potato trend", are more educational efforts around both prevention and health treatment options. The FDA, for example, could request that every product Website offer information on changing lifestyles as a possible way to treat conditions and that drug companies spend a certain percentage of their DTC budgets on prevention and disease awareness. That would be a hard sell because the reality is the biggest demographic segment in America is aging and as they age they putting on weight, becoming less active and dealing with the stress of trying to keep a roof over their families head. Put it all together and you have a market that continues to want to reach for a prescription vial rather than walking 20 minutes a day.