[Vision2020] America's Health Care is a National Disgrace

[Paul Rumelhart]

g. crabtree wrote:

> Mr. Rumelhart opines:
>
> "Also, how about regulating how pharmaceutical companies can advertise?
> I think it's amazing that people actually try to badger their doctors to
> into letting them take specific prescription medicines they see
> advertised on TV even when they don't need it medically."
>
> Perhaps one of the first procedures that nascent physicians you allude 
> to should acquire is the ability to check for a backbone in themselves 
> and their colleagues. Companies with a legal and legitimate product to 
> sell should not have their free speech curtailed. If a patient sees an 
> advert and believes that he might benefit from the product being sold 
> it seems very reasonable that he ask his doctor about its potential 
> use. If the doctor can't stand up to "badgering" perhaps he should 
> reconsider his profession and become a trial lawyer or some other 
> profession in which spine is optional.


Whether the doctors are sufficiently macho enough to withstand this 
assault is immaterial.  I just find it interesting that the drug 
companies choose to advertise to your average couch potato who is much 
less informed than your average physician.  Not to mention that it is 
the physician that writes the prescription, so why advertise to the 
public at large?

I mean, it's not like we're talking about something dangerous here.  
It's only medication.  What could go wrong?

And as far as I see it, companies don't have a right to freedom of 
speech.  They are not people, and shouldn't be treated like they are 
people.  Their speech is supposedly regulated, and for good reason.  
Didn't we used to have laws about what drugs could be advertised on TV?

Paul