Healthcare Advertising

One doesn't have to be a Wharton Grad or a Harvard MBA to see that a major part of medical dollars are being used by Hospitals, Doctors, Drug Companies, indeed by the entire medical establishment, for ADVERTISING (q.v. on any TV program) to compete against one another for the dollar of the consumer, especially the sick consumer who has little choice when an illness arises. This broad net also includes the gullible consumer who is impelled to "Ask your Doctor if ________ is right for you," by ads that plant suggestions of possible maladies or conditions. It's just disgusting, and no one seems to be talking about it in this discussion of HealthCare.

And now we are seeing more "Harry and Louise" type ads threatening that people will lose their current meager and expensive healthcare coverage if the government does anything to subsidize healthcare - this is just more advertising dollars being spent, to prevent us from benefiting from a program that might help us financially and cut into the profits of these same medical advertisers!!!

The best thing the government could do is prohibit all medical advertising; in the absence of that, establish a government program that is NON-PROFIT, non-advertising, and competes with the for-profit industry that currently takes advantage of people who are sick to keep medical industry people in the acoutrements that come with ill-gained wealth (pun intended).

If you took all the money the medical industry spends on advertising, you could make a pretty good health system just with that. Imagine!

Henry Francisco, Special to

The Port Whitman Times