Big Pharma spent an additional $9.8 billion on marketing in the past 20 years. It worked
According to a study published Tuesday (Jan. 8) by researchers at Dartmouth College, total spending on marketing for condition awareness, health services, lab testing, and drugs ballooned from $17.7 billion annually in 1997 to almost $30 billion in 2016. The vast majority was spent by pharmaceutical companies on marketing prescription drugs—and the investment worked.
In 1997, drug companies spent roughly $17.1 billion on marketing for prescription drugs and any health conditions that may be associated with them. (A relatively paltry $600 million was spent to market condition awareness, health services, and lab testing.) By 2016, that figure was $26.9 billion. Simultaneously, total US spending on prescription drugs skyrocketed from $116.4 billion to $329 billion.
Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin, two physicians at Dartmouth who also study medical communication, combed through data available from three media-monitoring groups and the US National Health Expenditure Accounts. Of all the money spent advertising drugs, the majority went towards efforts to market to doctors. In 1997, the total spending on marketing to physicians was $15.6 billion. By 2016, it was $20.3 billon. Marketing to physicians includes sending paid representatives to doctors’ offices to talk about a drug, free samples of it, or compensating physicians for speaking engagements about the drug. (ProPublica created a tool you can use to see if your doctor has been compensated by pharmaceutical companies.)
