If you watch network or cable TV for any length of time, you’ve seen them — the commercials where the song and dance is about lowering your A1C, or the parade walking down the street is pushing that medication promising to help with weight loss, among many others.
Yes, they can be painful to watch, and somehow these spots have also attracted the ire of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Unfortunately for pharmaceutical companies and their advertising, Kennedy and his federal allies have the means to make it more difficult for Big Pharma to clutter up the airwaves.
While conservatives have normally backed the Trump administration, this issue has brought out the conservative media’s beef with the administration’s populist side.
“Advertising can of course be annoying,” write the editors of National Review, “but that is no reason to prohibit it. The future that single-payer supporters such as Kennedy envision is one where the government is your sole source of health care and also your sole source of information about health care. COVID should have made clear to all how undesirable that concentration of power over people’s health is.”
Moreover, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues, “Mr. Kennedy and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary last week announced a ‘crackdown’ on what they call ‘deceptive drug advertising.’ ‘Only radical transparency will break the cycle of overmedicalization that drives America’s chronic disease epidemic,’ Mr. Kennedy said.”
“What’s really going on here,” they continued, “is an effort to use government regulation to ban advertising for pharmaceuticals. This is a longtime project of the political left and Mr. Kennedy. But because this would violate the First Amendment, he’s trying to do it by the back door.”
Yet Americans have been losing faith in the healthcare system since the days of ObamaCare, so it’s no wonder that there is a growing distaste among many of us about the constant drumbeat of drug ads. It can be argued that RFK Jr.‘s animus toward Big Pharma is an extension of his longtime questioning as the founder of Children’s Health Defense about the sheer number of vaccines America’s youngest patients are required to take and their effects. Add to that the idea that curtailing pharmaceutical ads is an offshoot of the overall health freedom movement, a wellspring of Trump support, and it’s no wonder that Kennedy’s ideas are gaining traction.
The pharma industry has been playing by rules adopted nearly 30 years ago, as the WSJ explains:
The FDA currently requires drug makers to disclose significant side effects in their ads and provide a “fair balance” of information. Since 1997, the agency has allowed drug makers to direct consumers to a website and speak with a medical professional to learn more about a medicine’s risks rather than list every potential minor side effect. That’s because research has shown that consumers tune out serious side effects when they hear a laundry list of minor and rare risks. Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Makary plan to require manufacturers to disclose all and sundry potential side effects anyway.
Granted, there are drug spots where it seems half the time is spent advising would-be patients of all the possible side effects, but this would be even more pronounced under Kennedy’s proposal. Inevitably, drug makers will be discouraged from television advertising despite the fact that they’re selling a legal — and FDA approved — product. But, as envisioned, it would not be a strict and outright ad ban, such as the one placed on cigarettes in the 1970s.
That shadow banning is the fear of healthcare lobbyist Chris Meekins, whose memo to clients was provided to The Hill. While he questioned whether such a ban would survive a court challenge, Meekins also warned, “Do you sue and risk the Trump administration’s wrath? If a company sues over this, they could become a target of greater focus related to most-favored-nation actions and in Medicare drug negotiation (if they have a drug selected). No company wants to be the next Harvard.”
Meekins, of course, has a well-placed concern with regard to his clients, but Hill writer Dominick Mastrangelo cuts to the chase: “There could be major downstream impacts for media companies from drug manufacturers either spending less on advertising or placing greater scrutiny on how a drug commercial gets made. Many of the nation’s leading newscasts and daytime cable news shows feature wall-to-wall ads for drugs to combat conditions ranging from obesity to eczema and Crohn’s disease. Advertising executives and broadcast television insiders, meanwhile, warn Big Pharma ads are a key underpinning for the industry’s increasingly shaky financial foundation.”
Yes, follow the money. Certainly, those networks that have grown reliant on the cash cow of Big Pharma are scared of Kennedy’s ban, particularly as millions have cut the cable cord and now stream their favorites, often bypassing the ads altogether.
The United States is one of just two countries where Big Pharma can advertise, the other being New Zealand. But our heritage of free speech, which has often been encroached upon by the interests of government at specific times, should dictate that these ads remain. This isn’t the time or place for encroachment. As the Journal opines, “The pharma ad clampdown is left-wing paternalism,” and there’s always a mute button available to us.
