Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising and drug costs in America

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars advertising directly to patients or potential consumers of their products. Advertisements bombard our psyche with everything from erectile dysfunction remedies, blood pressure and cholesterol drugs to acne meds. Pharmaceutical representatives visit physicians daily leaving them with samples and other goodies. Does such commercialization of drugs increase their costs or is the real high cost of drugs due to the research and development? Should the U.S. allow patients to import expensive medications from other countries?

To be as fair to 'big pharma' as possible, it must be observed that it is indeed expensive to create new drugs and to test the drugs extensively on animal or human subjects. Even if some drugs are relatively inexpensive to produce or to bring from lab to market, other drugs, like antiretroviral drugs, were quite costly to bring to fruition, and their initial prices often reflect years of research. Also, because drug patents are of limited duration, it is in the drug company's interest to make as much money off of a new pharmaceutical before the patent runs out and cheaper generic drugs flood the market. Even before a drug's patent is exhausted, quite often very similar drugs from competitor companies with similar chemical profiles can rival a new drug's dominance, like, for example, Prozac vs. Paxil, Claritin vs. Allegra, etcetera.

However, all of that being allowed -- even if it did not add prohibitive costs, the packaging and marketing of drugs to consumers is absurd. A patient used to go to a doctor and ask for a doctor's expertise and advice in how to treat an ailment he or she was suffering. Now, patients see drugs advertised like cosmetics, and are encouraged to self-diagnose themselves as having a certain conditions, or to think that their condition is worse than it is, like a case of insomnia that might be better treated with less coffee during the day than a pill at night.