[MrWookie]

When I learned that the advertising budgets of big pharmas have outstripped their R&D budgets, I was pretty sure that something is wrong. On the other hand, it's hard to argue that companies should be forbidden from marketing their product, assuming it does what they say it does. If Ford can do it, why not GSK? Really, I think that the mass marketing of drugs is one of a many number of things wrong with US health care. Some more things that are wrong:

Health insurance in general. According to my best understanding, the US spends more per capita than most if not all countries on health care, but our standards are not the best. Something is broken here, and I'm not sure what. One would think that if there was a more efficient HMO out there that offered better service for a lower cost, people would flock to it and that company would be quite profitable, forcing the other companies to improve in order to compete. However, it would appear that offering bad service is so immensely profitable that all the companies seem to prefer to skimp on service for their base rather than trying to steal customers from their competitors by doing a better job. Something isn't right here.

Patent law in general. The drug companies say that we need to keep patent law as is or else their profits won't offset the high R&D costs for making a new drug. This argument would hold more water with me if R&D was actually the #1 expense of drug companies. Instead, it's marketing. Patents were originally intended to help the little guy break into the market with a good product rather than being immediately crushed by the bigger and likely more efficient competition. Instead, the patents of the little guy get bought up by the big guy, landing one fat paycheck for the little guy, less competition for the big guy, and higher prices for us. The high drug prices we're facing are probably more affected by patent law than they are by the marketing. I'd probably push for a reformed patent system instead of laws against marketing if I really wanted lower drug prices. However, fat chance of that ever happening.