In an interesting piece of work, MIT’s Dan Ariely reports on research that suggests that people given identical pills receive greater pain relief from the one they think costs more. He says this might explain why people lack confidence in generic pills and believe that more expensive brand name equivalents work better.
Meantime, Reuters reports that generic drug use may have slowed the growth of U.S. prescription drug costs last year to its lowest level in more than a decade.
However, USA Today reports that drug ads are pushing more Americans to ask their doctors about drugs that are advertised. And, as a result, more docs are then recommending prescriptions.
And the Associated Press reports:
“In a David vs. Goliath battle, Pennsylvania is among a handful of states trying _ with modest results at best - to counter the pharmaceutical industry's multibillion-dollar marketing and cut costs for prescription-aid programs for senior citizens, who are bombarded with "ask your doctor" advertising.”Posted by schwitz at March 6, 2008 06:33 AM | TrackBack
I heard the report about the efficaciousness of generic pills vs brand pills on NPR the other day, too. It was fascinating, and I hope MIT continues their research in this realm.
Ask your doctor advertising is loathsome. I can't believe people fall for that. I could only hope that it becomes banned, a la cigarette ads with doctor's testimonials -- yes, they actually existed!
To add to your fodder, another report came out today from an organization that compared the costs of medicine in the U.S. compared with the costs of the War in Iraq - the link is http://www.health-insurance.org/prescription-drugs-vs-iraq-war. You'll probably be surprised to hear that Prescription Drug costs outpace war costs by 2.5 times!
Posted by: Albert Camus at March 11, 2008 06:28 PM