Speedy Alka-Seltzer never killed or gouged anyone

 

Speedy Alka-Seltzer never killed or gouged anyone

 

The assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson catapulted gargantuan health insurance company profits to the fore of critical societal issues in America.

                                                                                              

But besides direct medical costs, the other pillar of excessive profits borne by strapped consumers, prescription drug prices, must also be addressed.

 

Health insurance companies are also the gatekeeper in league with Big Pharma to prevent needy folks from getting proper drugs without going into debt if not bankruptcy. Time after time a new drug prescribed for me provokes this response from my pharmacist: ‘Prescription delayed due to insurance issue.’ Try as I might, I could never get my drug insurer to budge on the $590 cost for a single monthly shot of migraine headache medicine while my daughter in Germany pays $10.

 

The prescription drug ripoff takes me back 70 years to one of my favorite advertising characters from the 1950's: Speedy Alka-Seltzer.

 

Speedy was an antacid tablet come to life, promising 'speedy' relief from indigestion. Speedy, and his cohorts pitching OTC (Over The Counter) medicines were both engaging and harmless creatures; never once needing a sound over voice warning of heart attacks, strokes, internal bleeding, diarrhea, thoughts of suicide, even death rattled off by the winner of a fast talking contest. Nor did Speedy extol us to demand a prescription for him from ol' Doc Jones since we simply plunked down our twenty-five cents for Speedy at Friendly Pharmacy.

 

 

Then in 1997, Speedy was relegated to the TV advertising back shelf when the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Direct To Consumer Advertising (DTCA). This was a brilliant and pernicious scheme in which Big Pharma pitched their dangerous and colossally costly prescription drugs directly to consumers, who could only get them by demanding 'ol Doc Jones write them a prescription. It only takes a few hours to boob tube watching to endure a dozen or more such disgusting ads.

 

It has been a money geyser for America's leading drug pushers, worth many times the $8 billion spent annually enticing gullible couch potatoes to self-medicate.

 

On DTCA, America is an outlier. Only New Zealand joins America in the industrialized world allowing DTCA.

 

Research shows half of patients request a TV ad promoted drug and doctors meet two thirds of patient requests. Doctors are businessmen too; why risk losing a paying customer simply because he's determined to get his TV ad induced drug of choice.

 

Getting back to long gone Speedy. He never killed anyone or forced them into debt. And unlike many of the Rolls Royce priced prescription drugs being hawked on TV by Big Doc Pharma, Speedy didn’t need a barely discernable disclaimer warning of debilitation, possible death to score an unaffordable drug.