As a group of former advertising writers, we’ve seen firsthand how billions of dollars in drug marketing drive consumer demand and influence physicians. Despite the astronomical sums funneled into medications, our nation ranks shockingly low on global health metrics. The question is: what’s going on?
Big pharma shapes the rules
Pharmaceutical companies don’t just sell drugs—they shape the healthcare narrative. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising ensures Americans are inundated with pitches for brand-name drugs like Skyrizi, Ozempic, and Eliquis. At the same time, older, equally effective medications fade into the background, underutilized and overlooked. By spending billions on ads, pharmaceutical companies create demand, influence prescribing patterns, and redefine how diseases are treated.
This strategy extends far beyond consumers. When ADHD medications first hit the market, companies promoted the disorder as a biologically driven condition best treated with prescriptions. They funded disease awareness campaigns and educational programs targeting schools, parents, and physicians. The result? A 42% increase in ADHD diagnoses among children from 2003 to 2011. As the pediatric market saturated, the narrative shifted to adults, driving a surge in adult ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions.
Diabetes treatment: A case study in pharma influence
The treatment of Type 2 diabetes offers another glaring example. In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies aggressively promoted an A1c target below 7%, heavily influencing treatment guidelines. By funding organizations like the American Diabetes Association (ADA), they embedded this benchmark into clinical practice, marketing high-cost drugs and insulin to achieve it. While profitable for the industry—diabetes drug sales hit $74 billion annually by 2020—the aggressive push led to widespread increases in hospitalizations due to hypoglycemia, a serious side effect that disproportionately affects elderly patients.
What will it take to fix a broken system?
So, how do we fix this? One bold solution is sweeping reform: banning DTC advertising, eliminating pharmaceutical sponsorship of continuing medical education (CME), and ending regulatory reliance on drug review fees paid by pharma companies. But these changes face immense resistance. DTC advertising is a billion-dollar industry, CME sponsorship is deeply entrenched, and regulatory agencies depend on pharma funding to function.
Charting a path to patient-centered care
Hope lies in creating alternative systems. Medical schools and independent health organizations must provide unbiased, evidence-based education that counters pharma’s messaging. By pooling resources and producing trustworthy content, these groups can reclaim the narrative by pooling resources to amplify the voice of science over marketing. For now, the United States remains “PharmaNation,” where profits—not patients—steer healthcare. Reclaiming the system will require a collective effort to prioritize evidence, transparency, and patient well-being over industry influence.
Based on decades of experience in medical advertising, we expose the hidden side of the pharmaceutical industry’s story — empowering patients to make informed decisions about their health.
References:
In the United States, healthcare often feels less like a system for our well-being and more like a corporate playground for pharmaceutical companies. The influence of “Big Pharma” is so pervasive that it reshapes how diseases are defined, treated, and marketed. If a map of America were reimagined, states might bear names like “Texaprexa” or “New Medico” to reflect the outsized role of drug companies in every corner of healthcare.