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News Release - July 20,
1999 Silence =
$ Imagine if General Motors could get the American taxpayer to heavily subsidize its research and development, fund government programs that purchase half of its cars and then get many of those same taxpayers to buy a new car each and every year. Good work if you can get it, right? Well, the American pharmaceutical industry's got it. The American pharmaceutical industry enjoys the highest profits of any United States industry according to Fortune Magazine. Their unmatched profits are fueled by high drug prices which strain government and private health plans, increase health insurance premiums, divert government funding from other vital health imperatives and make life-prolonging drugs out-of-reach to many low-income Americans. Moreover, these drugs are discovered with taxpayer funded corporate subsides and government research. And what does the taxpayer get for his investment? Among the highest drug prices in the world. The average prescription in the U.S. costs more than the same one in Italy, Germany and Japan and twice as much as the same one in Britain and France. For years, the lead talking point in the pharmaceutical industry's defense of high drug prices is that revenues are funneled back into research and development for the advent of a better generation of drugs. While this sounds great, the fact is that fifteen of the leading pharmaceutical companies' own annual reports put a hard freeze on this spin. With a total of $225 billion in sales last year, America's pharmaceuticals report spending $24 billion on research and development but almost three times that amount, $68 billion, on marketing, advertising and administration. Last year, pharmaceutical spending on direct consumer advertising alone increased at a rate three times faster than research and development. Just as the AIDS epidemic has been a magnifying glass on many of America's social ills, today it is a magnifying glass on pharmaceutical overpricing and overmarketing. For the cola wars, advertising is practically part of American culture. But AIDS drugs aren't Coke and Pepsi, and people with HIV only need so many ads to convince them to take treatments that can mean the difference between life or death. The crew of the Titanic didn't need to post ads to get people onto the lifeboats. They needed to get more lifeboats to the people. Perhaps most important, the question of which drugs to take should be influenced by physicians, not the slickest and most expensive ads Madison Avenue can devise. In a recent poll by IMS Health, a leading health care firm, nearly two-thirds of America's physicians said they would prefer a reduction or elimination of pharmaceutical's direct consumer marketing. With more than half of all AIDS drugs purchased through taxpayer funded programs, the American people have a right to expect that pharmaceutical companies follow the wisdom of the medical community, not their marketing departments. And in an eerie parallel to the teen smoking controversy, AIDS drug ads are not only unnecessary for people living with HIV but they could also be undermining efforts to stop HIV infection in the first place. Targeted to urban areas with high HIV infection rates, sexy drug ads at bus stops aimed at people with HIV are also reaching people at risk for HIV. At a time when there are no national HIV prevention campaigns, these ads may be fueling an already dangerous misperception that these drugs are a cure. The drug companies could squash the accusation that it's good for their AIDS drug business to portray life on protease drugs as appealing by diverting some of their massive advertising and marketing budgets toward an HIV prevention campaign and drug price reductions. Otherwise, it may be time for white boxes in the corner of AIDS drug ads that state "Warning: These drugs are not a cure for HIV or AIDS, have severe side effects and cost $15,000 every year." Today, Congress is looking at ways to reduce health care costs for the American people. The first step should be working to ensure better corporate responsibility from the pharmaceutical industry. Lower drug prices will make more drugs available to more Americans, cut government health spending, free funding from treatment for other health imperatives and could help relieve suffering in the developing world where AIDS threatens to bring down entire nations. |