The Boston Globe Magazine yesterday ran a case study of one pharmaceutical company’s efforts to keep generic alternatives to their expensive name-brand drug at bay, thus maintaining high prescription costs.
Through lawsuits, the makers of Prilosec have managed to keep the generics at bay while unleashing a half-a-billion-dollar marketing blitz to move people off Prilosec and onto Nexium, their costly, patent-protected new Purple Pill, which even their own studies show to be barely more effective than the original.
No surprise I dislike drug advertising, but I wish I could delude myself that doctors weren’t influenced by it. “Ask your doctor” indeed… [via Sigma Xi: In the News]