Did You Fall Prey to Jarvik's Lipitor Pitch?
(While you're here, please take our poll below!)
A question I'm asked frequently: Why do pharma companies advertise drugs on TV or in magazines when we can't buy them without a prescription anyway?
The simple answer: because they work. We Americans, in love with the idea of an instant fix, see a TV commercial or a magazine ad for a pill that can cure our symptoms and maladies, rush to our doctors' offices, and demand those prescriptions. A lifetime of bad habits or chronic problems - and we think they can be fixed by taking a pill.
The problem is, of course, that it doesn't really work that way. But we keep trying just the same. And those pharmaceutical manufacturers keep raking in their billions (yes, billions) because we fall for their promises.
Enter Pfizer, the manufacturer of Lipitor. Knowing their patent will run out in just a couple of years, they decide to convince us that Lipitor is the latest cure-all. The doctor says we should lower our cholesterol levels? Well -- OK -- Robert Jarvik, the supposed inventor of the artificial heart -- he will tell it to us straight, won't he?
We hear him talk about changing careers so he could save his father. We see him rowing and jogging, or in his white doctor-coat. If Robert Jarvik isn't believable, no one is.
Except now we've learned he's not so believable after all. He's not a licensed, practicing physician. He's not a cardiologist. The rower is a body-double. And, as it turns out, he was not the original inventor of the artificial heart. We've been hoodwinked. Or, as Pfizer explains it, we "misinterpreted."
Expensive hoodwinking, too. Here are some numbers: Pfizer spent $258 million creating, broadcasting and printing the ads and commercials for Lipitor. They paid Jarvik more than $1.3 million for his participation. But here's the number that will amaze you. Pfizer sold $12.7 BILLION worth of Lipitor in 2007 alone. If you took Lipitor, it may have cost YOU (or your insurance) $1000 more over that year than if you had used a generic statin drug instead. Even if your insurance paid for it.... multiply that $1000 by the number of other people who use your same insurance company who also took Lipitor and then remember whose pocket that $1000 really came out of. Of course. Yours. |
Did you believe those Pfizer ads? Did you think Robert Jarvik was a practicing cardiologist? Do you take Lipitor? Were you fooled like I was?
Take our poll -- then share your experiences in our forum.... we can all learn to be smarter healthcare consumers. Learning to interpret drug ads more closely is a great start.
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Photo ŠTom Boyle/Getty Images
Comments
I didn’t believe any of it because I knew Jarvik was an inventor and not an MD — but my 82-year-old mother-in-law was TOTALLY taken in by those ads.
I knew Jarvik was an inventor, but I also believed he had his MD. And if you put him in a lab coat, well, how different is that from a man in an unmarked car who pulls me over and approaches my vehicle dressed as a police officer? Even if he didn’t say,”Ma’am…I’m a police officer” the assumption is there.
What I’m learning is this – if I see a prescription drug advertised on TV, it’s the modern day equivalent of snake oil. Why else would they spend millions to pitch it?