That health care is a big profitable business in the United States isn’t news; we spend more on health care than any other industrialized nation on the planet, yet 41 million of us are uninsured.
Meanwhile, the television networks are reaping huge profits from running advertisements for a plethora of drugs we didn’t even know we needed. It’s gotten so bad that it’s impossible to tell if one of these advertisements is for a sedative or allergy medication. Especially disturbing is a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study finding that 30% of us ask our doctors for specific drugs we’ve seen advertised and 44% of us are receiving prescriptions for them.
FAIR‘s Normon Solomon has a great yet simple idea:
“Every commercial for food and drugs should be taxed—with the proceeds going to pay for ‘truth commission’ ads from independent researchers—to keep the public informed about the latest scientific findings on the benefits and risks of such products.”
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