U.S. pharmaceutical lobby group PhRMA has launched a new ad offensive that looks to highlight the American life sciences industry’s ability to get new drugs to patients.
As part of its “American Cures” campaign, launched in February, PhRMA is now running a series of new ads called “Medicines First,” with perhaps a nod to the current U.S. administration’s “America First” slogan.
This specifically looks to show that while the U.S. spends a lot on medicines and drug development, patients in the U.S. get “new medicines three years faster than patients in other countries,” the group said.
Other key facts it highlights in the ads include that Americans “can access 88% of new medicines, compared to just 36% in other high-income countries,” and that “88% of new cancer treatments are available in the United States versus 41% in other countries.”
One ad zeroes in on younger patients. “When your child gets sick, time is everything,” says an actor portraying a mother in one of the new commercials. “Getting treatment sooner means more options and a real chance of getting better.”
The actor goes to say that “because of strong American leadership, we get these new medicines first.” The actor then warns that “in other countries, patients are told to wait—or go without.”
The ad ends with a warning not to follow these other countries’ health policies and “to tell Washington to keep America in the lead.”
This is a nod to health technology assessment systems, often used in Europe and the U.K., that assess the cost of new medicines before releasing them via taxpayer-funded systems. They can recommend against funding new drugs or ask for discounts to allow them to be accessed.
The U.S. does not use such systems and drugs are often more expensive than in other countries as a result, though as PhRMA points out, this does allow medicines to be used potentially more quickly.