To the surprise of many, the American Medical Association is now openly calling for the FDA to ban direct-to-consumer drug advertising, a deceptive marketing channel that was only legalized by the FDA in 1997.
Since then, drug prices have skyrocketed, health care costs have hit the stratosphere, and consumers are asking their doctors for an increasingly bewildering array of high-priced patented chemicals (medications) that, for the most part, don't even work on most people.
Instead of America's health getting better, it's getting WORSE. More people now suffer from not just chronic degenerative disease, but also now the side effects of taking dangerous prescription medications to supposedly treat those diseases.
The result is that America has become the most expensive, corrupted and unethical health care system in the world, where Big Pharma profits drive nearly every regulatory decision and political action.
Now, the AMA says it's time to stop the insanity of advertising prescription drugs on television, and there's no doubt the AMA is correct on this point.
Do you know why the AMA is so against drugs being marketed to consumers?
It's not
just because they care about patients.
It's because the law you're referring to wasn't really made so drug companies could market to patients; it's so they could stop wining and dining doctors and basically paying them to prescribe their medications.
Nothing has changed. Those dollars now are used on advertising rather than buying doctors.
All the AMA wants is their perks back.
I'm not saying it's
good to market drugs to consumers. It's not. They have no idea wtf they're seeing or what they're talking about 90% of the time.
But let's not pretend the AMA is altruistic in this.