Letters and Comments for August 27, 2009

Letters and Comments for August 27, 2009

The high cost of medicine

To the Editor:

A drug prescribed by my doctor for cancer cost $49,700 for the one-year course. Fortunately my insurance paid the bulk of the cost. So, why the high cost? Here, perhaps is at least a partial explanation.

I studied the prescription medicine advertising in the July 27 issue of Newsweek and found color ads for Pristiq, Symbicort, Zostavax (two full pages) and Tritipix. Black and white ads were Pristiq, Symbicort, Zostavax, Zetia and Trilipix (two pages).

I went to the Newsweek web page to find their advertising rates. Color pages are $191,500 per page and black and white $123,095 per page. Total cost of prescription medications advertising in that issue of Newsweek came to $1,887,570. Monthly cost of advertising in Newsweek, published four times per month, would logically be $7,550,280.

Reader’s Digest prescription pharmaceutical advertising was also enlightening. Here’s what I found: four pages each for Zostavax, Lyrica, Actonel, Zetia , Caduet and Pristiq, with three pages for Toviaz and Advair Discus, and a single page for Pfizer. This is 31 pages for a total of $6,559,600 (at $211,600 per page according to their web page). Consequently the total monthly cost of prescription medicines advertising in these two magazines for one month comes to $14,109,880.

Costs in other magazines is open to your speculations!

TV is inundated with prescription med advertising. CNN’s rate for a 20-second spot is $20,000; national coverage on other networks is higher at about $500,000 for a 30-second spot, and during a national sports event, can be $2,600,000.

Final question: When I buy a prescription, how much of my dollar (or my insurance company dollar) goes for manufacture of the medicine, how much goes for the study which led to the development of the medicine, how much of that development cost was covered by a government grant (me), and how much goes for advertising the medicine to the general public who can’t buy it without a prescription?

Don Swart

Joseph