You are so right. And extremely well-funded marketing and advertising departments; yet another reason our meds costs have spiked so dramatically after the gubmit started allowing prescription medicine ads on television. It used to go on behind the scenes, with "drug reps" visiting the doctor's office to leave off not just brochures about a drug and untracked samples of several drugs, such as antidepressants or stimulants that the doctor could use on himself if he wished, but also lavish holiday gifts or passes to "medical seminars" in Hawaii or Las Vegas, doctors only (no spouses).
After centuries of "ethical" medicine having avoided advertising, now BigPharm can also go right to the gullible tv-watching sheep with high-production videos of winsome interracial couples running through hazy fields of flowers, jumping in slo-mo with their dog and frisbee and scrunchy grins, having their best life in a McMansion in spite of that pesky old cancer, etc. It's even more sickening than the legally obligatory litany of side effects rapidly recited.
Spot on, what you wrote
You’re absolutely correct. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, in the early part of my career we were regularly courted by “drug reps”. I had my textbooks purchased by them in my first year of grad school, was taken to a private dinner in a wine cellar with 7 of my buddies where we dropped THOUSANDS of dollars, and a night on the town during a conference I attended - again to the tune of thousands. All to persuade us to choose specific drugs for use in anesthesia. I was in my early 20s and totally caught off guard by this. I was dating an internal medicine resident at the time who drank a $400 glass of scotch provided to him during a “drug rep dinner”, which he attended literally a minimum of 3 nights a week.
What went on was ridiculous. Then when people started to crack down, Big Pharma just had their lobbyists ensure they were legislatively protected. Obamacare tied reimbursement for doctors into the use of certain medications, specifically vaccines. Why do you think hospitals started mandating their staff be vaccinated against the flu under penalty of termination? It’s not because they’re so altruistic. It’s because the Affordable Care Act directly tied hospital reimbursement rates into the level of staff compliance with flu vaccine.
I hardly recognize the health care industry anymore. It’s sure changed since my first clinical rotation as an undergraduate nursing student in 1995.