Patients should be free to choose what products they want, but also be free to learn about them.
T he Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that he supports further restricting pharmaceutical drug advertisements, and legislation has also been introduced by Democrats supporting a full ban on pharmaceutical ads to patients.
If you asked 100 people how they feel about pharmaceutical advertisements, chances are you’d have difficulty finding many fans. But many of those people are healthy, and they have never had the need to learn about potential treatments for their ailments. That reality has made these ads low-hanging fruit for politicians promising to silence the annoying jingles that seem to fill every commercial break. But the truth is that restricting these advertisements — whether through outright bans or crushing overregulation — will come at a steep cost to those who actually use and need them, or might do so one day: patients, now and in the future.
Pharmaceutical advertising serves as a vital source of health information that translates directly into lifesaving action. Appointments with doctors are brief, so patients need to be equipped with ample knowledge to be their own best advocate, thus increasing the chances they will get the treatment that’s right for them. More importantly, many ads are for symptomatic and chronic diseases that patients understand intimately after long periods of suffering; patients are therefore often better informed of how they individually trade off side-effects, efficacy, and costs. Although doctors may be more aware of population-wide effects, patients understand personal impact better. Consumer ads therefore target the true experts on the individual impacts of drugs, that is, those with direct day-to-day experience of such diseases, and what such medications entail for them.
Moreover, in all likelihood, the pharmaceutical companies are in an industry where there are more obstacles to producing misleading ads than any other. First, the government must approve randomized clinical trial evidence on the quality of the product (safety and efficacy) before it is marketed. Second, the government only allows marketing for use supported by this approved evidence, rendering so called off-label marketing illegal. Third, drugs are subject to product liability, just like any other industry, which makes marketing of low-quality products very costly. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, a third-party expert — namely doctors — needs to approve consumers’ choices. If advertising is advisable for other industries without these consumer protections and safeguards, surely it should be for drugs.
Drug ads encourage patients to talk to their doctors about conditions and treatment options, thereby expanding the possible appropriate options. In 2024, the FDA approved 50 novel drugs and therapies, including new treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s, as well as cutting edge cell and gene therapies. Without advertising to raise awareness of these breakthrough treatment options, countless patients might never know they’re available. The benefits to millions of patients who are made aware of new treatments in this fashion ought to weigh much more heavily than the ideological or aesthetic objections of anti-capitalists who are too lazy to reach for the remote and press the fast-forward button.
Restricting pharmaceutical advertising isn’t just bad health policy, it’s bad economic policy. Many argue that if companies would just cut their marketing and spend it on research and development, we would be better off. This is backward economics. To start with, direct to consumer ads are only about 13 percent of overall marketing expenses, the rest being spent on informing doctors and providing free samples. In contrast to the public perception, drugmakers’ expenditure on marketing or advertising has shrunk by half, from 6.1 percent of revenues in 1979 to 2.8 percent in 2018. By comparison, pharmaceutical companies spend around 21 percent of their revenues on research and development, outpacing other research-intensive industries like software and semiconductors. When companies invest billions developing groundbreaking treatments, they need efficient ways to communicate these advancements to patients and doctors. Over-regulating how companies communicate to customers risks stifling the very investment that drives innovation and ultimately lowers costs. Put simply, larger markets incentivize R&D spending; increasing marketing spending, if successful, ought to raise R&D efforts.
Critics also often claim pharmaceutical advertising drives patients toward expensive name-brand drugs when cheaper alternatives exist. The evidence says otherwise. Research has found that “despite concerns that direct-to-consumer ads would push patients toward more expensive branded medications. . . the increased number of office visits due to direct-to-consumer ads usually resulted in a prescription for a generic drug or a non-drug treatment.” When ads suggest “talk to your doctor,” the free market is working exactly as it should. More importantly, more than half of total marketing expenses are for free samples, which no one can argue raises prices.
Instead of fixing what’s broken, policy-makers are targeting a system that works. The FDA already requires that ads be accurate, present fair and balanced views of benefits and risks, avoid misleading language, and clearly present major side effects. Additionally, the FDA announced in 2023 new rules requiring TV and radio pharmaceutical advertising to ensure that major statements about side effects be presented in a clear, conspicuous, and neutral manner.
Restricting free speech and free markets — when smart regulation is already in place to protect patients — will only serve to undermine innovation, competition, and the free flow of critical health-care information. Bureaucrats are ill-advised to take away the power Americans have to champion their own health and their opportunities to benefit from our country’s role as the global leader in medical innovation.
Indeed, many people agree with Secretary Kennedy that the government should not mandate people to take specific medical products, nor censor product information that does not fit a political agenda. But why then should the government mandate that patients cannot get new product information? Patients should be free to choose what products they want, but also be free to learn about them.