I guess this is a pretty US centric question but I see so many commercials for drugs to treat very specific and/or life threatening conditions. If I had one of these conditions, I would hope I wouldn’t need to “Ask my doctor about…” a drug, but rather they would just, ya know, *prescribe* it to me. Are there really enough people with diagnosed conditions who’s doctors haven’t prescribed them the corresponding treatment that these commercials are effective? I’ve never really understood it but obviously they must be effective if there’s so many of them on TV.
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With how large the US is, yeah. There’s people who go to their doctors and say “Hey, I saw this ad for Examplex, it seemed like it’d work for me. Can I try it?” and the doctor will go “Well, it’s new, I wasn’t going to recommend it yet, but if you want to, sure, I can write you a prescription.” And enough people do that that the pharmaceutical companies see a profit.
It does seem really really weird though.
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