How TV shows are killing American Healthcare

If you feel inundated with pharmaceutical ads, it might have something to do with your taste in TV shows. These days, it’s hard to even watch TV without encountering a barrage of ads promising to cure everything from mild-to-moderate plaque psoriasis to pneumococcal pneumonia. 

Pharmaceutical companies with very deep pockets argue that patients have a right to know all of their options. As the graph below indicates, the top-five Pharma advertisers spend over $1 billion per year on TV ads. Thus, rapid fire commercials with fast talking narration fill the evening airwaves. And those big pharma companies know their target-rich environments. During a recent evening broadcast of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, the NBC broadcast network fired a barrage of pharma ads at viewers.

With a little help from GoodRx, a free, mobile app intended to help consumers find the least expensive pharmacy in their neighborhood, we researched the price of those “game show” drugs. Here’s a sampling of what ran on a typical Tuesday evening:

There were a couple of a-ha moments in this research. Of the seven ads, three were for various types of auto-immune conditions. Second, the annual cost of several game show drugs now rivals the cost of a full year of tuition at private liberal arts college. The most outrageous game show drug is Acthar, which runs $38,628 per month or about $1,287.60 per day. The annual cost would buy you a nice two bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side in New York City. 

"It’s just a matter of months before we start seeing drugs that cost close to $1 million per year advertised on television. It’s about to get really ugly.” 

Dave Runkel, PharmD

“The ads, which once focused on treatments for chronic but generally nonfatal conditions, have turned to higher cost specialty drugs,” said Sal Monana, PhD, a pharmacy consultant with Alliant Employee Benefits. “The first few years, it was really just lifestyle drugs intended to improve the quality of one’s life rather than for alleviating pain or curing disease. But now, we have crossed into the most serious and life-threatening illnesses.” Depending on which show you’re watching, prescription drug makers are responsible for as many as 38 percent of ads during commercial breaks. That’s according to data from iSpot.tv, a company that tracks TV ads and their impact. The data cover the valuable 8-10pm primetime slot over the 12 months that concluded at the end of March. “As the wave of drug discovery and FDA approvals continue, employers are growing increasingly concerned about an unsustainable cost curve that increases in scope with each new specialty drug approval,” says Dave Runkel, PharmD, Pharmacy Practice Leader at Alliant. “The FDA pipeline is bursting with specialty drugs. It’s just a matter of months before we start seeing drugs that cost close to $1 million per year advertised on television. It’s about to get really ugly.” 

The pharmacy industry is fast-moving and extremely complicated. Alliant’s pharmacy practice includes PharmD and PhD trained pharmacists who help employers implement workable solutions that provide greater visibility and cost control. We also offer unique pharmacy purchasing solutions that provide best-in-class savings through either 1) an unsurpassed leverage of a $2 billion group purchasing organization, or 2) a unique pharmacy benefit manager platform that drives lowest net costs by fully aligning PBM incentives with our employer clients to manage out wasteful spending. 

These are just a few of the fresh ideas that are taking shape in employee benefits.