Regardless of defenses by the pharmaceutical industry, DTCA is failing to be the educational tool it was designed to be, and is causing Americans to become an overmedicated society. Furthermore, the amount of money spent on advertising is helping to drive the price of health care and prescription drugs even higher. Eventually the costs of prescription drugs will be driven so high, that American consumers will not be able to afford the medications they need. The drug companies defend the increased price of drugs by saying that these rises are needed in order to fund research efforts. However, according to David Hatch, the drug industry’s spending on advertisement has risen faster than its spending on the research of new drugs, 145 percent and 59 percent respectively, from 1997 to 2001. Pharmaceutical advertising is also believed to cause unnecessary complications in doctor-patient relationships. Unless stricter FDA regulations can be enforced that increase consumer understanding of prescription risks, decrease problems in doctor-patient relationships, and help to reduce costs of prescription drugs, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising should be eliminated and the patent protection laws that influence this type of advertising should be examined thoroughly.
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