Second Opinion: Big Pharma’s Advertising Carries a Big Price Tag for American Patients and Taxpayers

Washington Post Editorial Misses Connection Between DTC Advertising and Higher Prescription Drug Prices

A July 28 editorial published in The Washington Post draws the wrong conclusion on the clinical value of Big Pharma’s advertising directly targeting consumers, and dismisses the proven connection between brand name drug companies’ billions of dollars in marketing spending each year, and higher prescription drug prices paid by American patients and taxpayers.

Big Pharma’s staggering spending on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising (nearly $14 billion in 2023 alone) increases spending on high-priced brand name blockbusters, as well as patient uptake of medications with low clinical value, or that they may not need.

The editorial points to the example of Pfizer’s brand name statin Lipitor to make an argument that DTC advertising spending from brand name manufacturers results in increased demand for both their branded products and generic competitors, asserting, “that suggests the ads prompted people to visit their doctors, who often recommended the more affordable generic instead of the costly branded drug.”

The problem with that example? It ignores the fact Pfizer rapidly wound down its aggressive marketing of Lipitor once the brand name blockbuster went off patent and faced generic competition.

The blockbuster drug faced its first competition in November 2011. By May 2012, Pfizer had stopped all advertising promoting the product. Big drug companies stop marketing spending on brand name products once they face competition from more affordable alternatives, like generics and biosimilars, as a common practice.

Pfizer’s strategy to overlap marketing spending with generic competition at all, even for less than six months, was an outlier designed to maximize continued sales of the higher priced brand name product.

“Typically a drug maker would have given up on marketing a medicine once cheaper rivals entered the market,” The Wall Street Journal explained at the time. “But Pfizer sought to wring as much revenue from Lipitor as it could for as long as it could while generic competition was still in its infancy.”

Big Pharma’s DTC advertising is designed to increase sales of high-priced brand name products, regardless of their clinical value for patients or their affordability.

Big Pharma’s ads are not just “irritating to watch,” they often mislead consumers, prioritizing catchy marketing jingles and brand recognition over clear information about medications and their prices.

Research published in JAMA Network found advertising spending on drugs considered to have “high therapeutic value” accounts for fewer than one-third of all DTC pharmaceutical advertisements. As the paper states, “[d]irect-to-consumer advertising is associated with use of higher-cost drugs over generics and less expensive alternatives.”

In addition, price hikes and big DTC ad spending go hand-in-hand. For several of the pharmaceutical industry’s best-selling products, Big Pharma repeatedly hikes prices while pushing these drugs to consumers via DTC ads. This combination drives up spending for consumers and the entire health care system. Take Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer’s blockbuster blood-thinning drug Eliquis, for example. The brand name drug makers have spent more than $1 billion in direct-to-consumer advertising on the drug since 2013. Meanwhile, the drug companies have increased the product’s price by at least six percent per year for ten years. When Eliquis came to market in 2013, it carried a monthly price tag of $250 – but in 2022, the list price for a one-month supply of Eliquis was $529, more than double when it came to market.

A March 2025 analysis released by The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing (CSRxP) found the combined impact of Big Pharma increasing sales of high-priced brand name drugs and writing off their marketing spending to reduce their tax burden cost U.S. taxpayers between $1.5 and $1.7 billion per year.

There are only two countries in the world that allow DTC advertising for pharmaceuticals: New Zealand and the United States. Nine in ten American voters are concerned drug companies spend billions of dollars per year on DTC advertising for prescription drugs, oftentimes writing off their ad spending for tax purposes.

The Administration and lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, are right to be applying greater scrutiny to the pharmaceutical industry’s aggressive marketing practices in the U.S. and their impact on drug prices — and considering solutions.

The bipartisan Drug-price Transparency for Consumers (DTC) Act is one solution Congress should advance. This bill would require Big Pharma to disclose the price of their products in advertising targeted directly to consumers. This would help shine a light on Big Pharma’s egregious pricing practices — arming policymakers and the public with greater transparency into the prices set by manufacturers on blockbuster brand name products, serve as a deterrent to price-gouging and empower patients with useful information as they weigh the best treatment options for their individual health care needs.

The Administration should also be commended for calling greater attention to the consequences of Big Pharma’s aggressive marketing practices and DTC ad spending, and considering additional solutions.

This bipartisan work puts the interests of American patients above the interests above Big Pharma and appropriately recognizes the role of brand name drug companies staggering DTC advertising spending on drug prices in America. It should continue.

Read CSRxP’s analysis on the taxpayer cost of Big Pharma’s DTC advertising HERE.

Read more on bipartisan, market-based solutions to hold Big Pharma accountable HERE.