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| Free drug samples can be costly |
 Deceptive drug ads are making headlines in 2008, leading to Congressional investigations and lawsuits, and even prompting some drug companies to pull their misleading advertising.
While the headlines have focused on the roughly $5 billion a year that drug manufacturers spend on ads to influence consumers, the pharmaceutical industry spends even more trying to influence the choices doctors make for us. More than $7 billion a year is spent on direct marketing to U.S. doctors, according to the Prescription Project, a campaign funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Surprisingly, these totals are dwarfed by the biggest expense of drug marketing, free drug samples given to doctors. These “free” samples are worth $18 billion annually.
Getting you hooked
While letting people try a drug to see if it can help a medical condition may seem like a noble gesture—and many physicians use drug samples with admirable intent—the real costs of the samples come later.
Drug companies typically use free samples to introduce new, patent-protected drugs that may need to be taken for years. Once you use up the samples, you and your health plan have to pay full price for an expensive medication, often for years to come.
Meanwhile, older drugs—even if they are just as effective as new medications—tend to get overlooked because drug companies are promoting their newer drugs through free samples. Older drugs—often available in generic form—usually cost much less and have a more extensive safety record.
Samples are often provided to your doctor to steer you to the option that will make the most money for the drug manufacturer, circumventing more cost-effective medication options that might treat you equally well. Samples are a huge investment by the drug manufacturers, designed to raise their profits, at your expense.
Trust goal: safe, effective, and reasonable
As a not-for-profit health insurance company devoted to Wisconsin public school employees, the WEA Trust understands the importance of prescription drugs in our members’ medical care.
The Trust’s ultimate goal in covering a particular medication is to provide the safest, most effective drugs that will produce the best outcomes at a reasonable cost.
Part of the analysis performed by our pharmacists and physicians is to gauge whether a new drug is more effective than a drug that has been used safely for years. It’s worth noting that the FDA doesn’t require pharmaceutical companies to conduct a head-to-head comparison between an older drug and a newer drug to see if the newer drug is any better. All the FDA requires for approval is that the drug be safe and effective—not safer or more effective.
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