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Efforts to Ban Drug Commercials on Radio

TheBigA said:
Sanders believes that by banning drug advertising, that will lower the cost of drugs. What he really should do is pass a law that caps the price of drugs.
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Both the Biden administration and Trump administration have already taken steps in this direction.
Starting January 1st, 2026, Medicare beneficiaries will receive negotiated discounts on 10 popular and expensive drugs under a law signed by President Biden. A report from CMS says it will reduce costs on the covered drugs by 50-60%. Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program: Negotiated Prices for Initial Price Applicability Year 2026 | CMS

And President Trump signed an executive order last month that demanded drug prices be lowered to the levels paid in Europe, or else he'll apply tariffs and authorize more foreign imports. It remains to be seen if this order will actually lower prices.

Mr. Sanders' bill is in addition to these actions, and he knows it.
 
Don CT said:
I heard a drug ad the other day and the side effects outweighed the good. They had something like 50 side effects that didn't sound pleasant at all. Then they said there maybe more unknown side effects.
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I record everything with a TiVo and mostly skip commercials. But in a motel in the mountains I had to watch the commercials. They're mostly entertaining. A few I ended up seeing over and over but a lot I had never seen.

And I can't imagine ever being willing to take this one drug because they went on and on and on about the bad things that could happen.
 
vchimpanzee said:
And I can't imagine ever being willing to take this one drug because they went on and on and on about the bad things that could happen.
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The disclaimers are required for all pharmaceutical advertising, regardless of whether in print, on TV, or the radio. Personally, I don't see why they are necessary since your physician is the one who is the final arbiter as to whether or not they are prescribed and has an ethical responsibility to review those side effects with the patient.

Now, if Senator Sanders wants to do away with that clutter, I'll lobby in his favor. But from the standpoint of a patient, I think those ads do more good than potential harm. (And I have, at various times, been on three of the most-advertised drugs ... one of them currently. Without any side effects that weren't manageable.)
 
K.M. Richards said:
The disclaimers are required for all pharmaceutical advertising, regardless of whether in print, on TV, or the radio. Personally, I don't see why they are necessary since your physician is the one who is the final arbiter as to whether or not they are prescribed and has an ethical responsibility to review those side effects with the patient.

Now, if Senator Sanders wants to do away with that clutter, I'll lobby in his favor. But from the standpoint of a patient, I think those ads do more good than potential harm. (And I have, at various times, been on three of the most-advertised drugs ... one of them currently. Without any side effects that weren't manageable.)
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Why does a patient need to know what is being advertised. Hopefully your doctor will tell you if you need a new expensive fancy drug.
 
Don CT said:
Why does a patient need to know what is being advertised. Hopefully your doctor will tell you if you need a new expensive fancy drug.
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Sometimes it does not occur to a doctor to suggest the latest and greatest, especially if they resist the direct marketing efforts made to them by the manufacturer reps. These ads have the benefit of making the patients aware of those drugs' existence and ask their doctor.

I don't see why you seem biased against patient knowledge.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Sometimes it does not occur to a doctor to suggest the latest and greatest, especially if they resist the direct marketing efforts made to them by the manufacturer reps. These ads have the benefit of making the patients aware of those drugs' existence and ask their doctor.

I don't see why you seem biased against patient knowledge.
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Doctors over prescribe medications because one kick backs and two, patients demands. Look at how many people who don’t need Ozempic are on it.
 
kevtronics said:
Oh, they most certainly do that too, to the extent that doctors are programmed to think that drugs are the solution to every problem, and they give out opioid painkillers like candy.

I recently listened to an NPR program about a woman who took drugs for 15 years to treat a bipolar disorder which she didn't have, because doctors pushed them on patients who were simply depressed, rather than who actually had symptoms of manic/depressive (bipolar) disorder.

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What absolute nonsense. The isolated cases that stand out do so for a reason: they are not the norm. I couldn’t count the number of doctors practicing in my area- absolutely huge volume. We had one urgent care that was effectively a pill mill; that was shut down. Painting the rest of the physicians with the same brush is patently absurd. There are always going to be bad actors in every field. And there are far more good ones, who often find their hands at least partially tied—not solely by the government. Let’s not forget insurance companies and their formularies that require near impossible time and effort by doctors to overcome to prescribe anything not on the bean counters’ lists.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
Let’s not forget insurance companies and their formularies that require near impossible time and effort by doctors to overcome to prescribe anything not on the bean counters’ lists.
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Not always. One of the topical meds I use to keep my psoriasis under control used to be covered as a cream but in the past couple of years, for reasons I don't understand, they now only have it in the formulary in ointment form. Only trouble is that in my case the petroleum base makes the plaque take on a consistency not unlike wet sand that has been allowed to dry, and then it comes off in a way that creates some small bloody spots.

When I ran out of my stash of the cream, my dermatologist submitted a formulary exception form, and it was approved within two days.
 
Trump just directed his administration to crack down on pharmaceutical ads through a rule making process.


While several reasons are offered to justify this, it's clearly another way for Trump to harm news organizations. The vast majority of spots on TV network newscasts is made up of Big Pharma ads, and they're also major sponsors on the cable news channels. Any sweeping restrictions on those ads would cause financial pain for commercial broadcasters giving Trump new leverage over all of them.
 
How many times has Balance of Nature been sued or forced to change their ads to adapt to changing rules?

The story says it stops short of an outright ban. That means drug companies will find a loophole.
 
I actually support this. The drug ads are some of the most annoying commercials on TV. They have taken over a good fraction of the commercial loads during every type of television show - old repeats, soaps, Grey's Anatomy, you name it. Especially the depressing number of side effects, which can range from headaches to nausea to oily discharge from the (something), to coma and death..."in rare cases" of course.
Drugs like Vioxx have been pulled in the last 20 years for similar things.

Commercial loads in the '80s didn't have long drawn-out drug ads, and networks survived. Of course, this is the streaming era now... so your mileage may vary.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Trump just directed his administration to crack down on pharmaceutical ads through a rule making process.
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If you read the story you linked, it's not rulemaking as much as it is enforcement.
The only change to the rules proposed by anyone quoted in the article is eliminating the loophole that allowed electronic media to refer to another ad in another publication for a complete list of side effects. This is why you often see/hear 'See our Ad in Reader's Digest for more information.' That print ad has a full page of information in 6 or 8pt type which could never fit in a broadcast medium.

TheBigA said:
The story says it stops short of an outright ban. That means drug companies will find a loophole.
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Indeed. The biggest problem in this country is that Congress refuses to aggressively kill loopholes in the law wherever they exist. It took 14 Congresses and 7 presidential elections to get someone to even try to fix this one.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
The biggest problem in this country is that Congress refuses to aggressively kill loopholes in the law wherever they exist. It took 14 Congresses and 7 presidential elections to get someone to even try to fix this one.
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Two words: Money talks. Lobbyists have boatloads of it, and Congresscritters love to receive those campaign contributions bribes. Sorry to get political, but it is what it is.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
If you read the story you linked, it's not rulemaking as much as it is enforcement.
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To be clear, the White House said it planned to change the remove the “Adequate Provision” loophole that opened the floodgates to direct-to-consumer drug advertising in 1997, via a rule-making process. This would in essence remove direct-to-consumer advertising from broadcast media because without that policy, pharmaceutical ads would need to announce full contraindications, boxed warnings and precautions instead of just the summary they include now. Past efforts to restrict drug advertising have been blocked by the courts on First Amendment grounds, but this policy change gets around that by making the disclosure requirements too long to fit into a TV (or radio) spot.

Here is the official press release:


The Trump administration is taking action to return to the pre-1997 status quo by engaging in FDA rule-making to close the “adequate provision” loophole to ensure risk disclosure, and stepping up enforcement action of DTC pharmaceutical ads to ensure companies are fulfilling their legal duty to disclose medical information to enable patients to make an informed decision.
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Theater of My Mind said:
To be clear, the White House said it planned to change the remove the “Adequate Provision” loophole that opened the floodgates to direct-to-consumer drug advertising in 1997, via a rule-making process.
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Correct. This would involve striking one sentence from the FDA's regulations (specifically 21 CFR 201.1(e)(1)(B)).

This would in essence remove direct-to-consumer advertising from broadcast media because without that policy, pharmaceutical ads would need to announce full contraindications, boxed warnings and precautions instead of just the summary they include now.
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US Code specifically allows broadcast advertisement of prescription drugs with a "brief summary relating to side effects [and] counterindications" in Title 21 USC, section 352 ( n ), "under regulations that shall be issued by the Secretary."

To my way of thinking, just deleting "Adequate Provision" without replacing it would require an act of Congress.
 
So, this effectively puts in place a de-factor "ban" on drug ads by making the requirements too onerous or restrictive.

This reminds me of the de-facto "ban" on trade with China back in April or May (or was it June?) by setting the tariff rate so high (I think it was over 200% at one point?) that it was effectively impossible to pay, so trade not only slowed down, it effectively stopped altogether.

c
 
I don't understand how viewers can be so distracted by those "happy" videos during the disclaimers that they don't understand that you might be trading clearer skin for blindness or death. But apparently it works.

Maybe mandating that the disclaimers be read clearly and in silence, accompanied by large type scrolling on the screen, would be a good first step.
 


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