Healthcare advertising and marketing is on the rise. Few healthcare providers even had marketing departments in the 1970’s. Now, even mainstream providers are investing in their images. Advertising often helps the consumer make choices amid a large number of options. But consumer patient choice is increasingly limited by managed care plans, adding a layer of irony to the spread of direct advertising. In this paper I would like to talk about advertising, specifically in the healthcare field, go over some the problems, and try to find solution to some of the problems in the industry, and try to express my opinions on the matter.

Advertising is salesmanship. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It can either be profitable or unprofitable. It is any form of non-personal presentation and promotion of goods, ideas, or services by an identified sponsor. Advertising is used for business firms, non-profit organizations, professionals, and social agencies. Major decisions in advertising include objective setting, budget decisions, message, and media decisions, and campaign evaluation. It is a

Although consumers are initially unaware of the benefits that they may or may not receive from different drugs, a drugs manufacturer can use advertising to inform consumers about its product. For example, from an economic standpoint, The competitive producers of drug A would never to choose to advertise. These firms must price at marginal cost and would therefore never recover the cost of advertising. The producer of drug B however, may wish to advertise since it has a monopoly over the production of drug B and can choose a price that exceeds its marginal cost. Because of the expected benefit that drug B shows from advertising, consumers will be more drawn to it if their HMO provides it. These are some of the problems that occur with advertising, and it affects us in a health, as well as an economic standpoint. HMOs tend to only worry about making a profit, other than offer you as a consumer the best type of care, or best type of medicine available, rather they offer you the cheapest care, or medicine in order to make a profit. Mainly this is due to government regulation, and the budgets of these Health Care plans.

Another concern to acknowledge is who and what healthcare providers advertising is reimbursed. It is obvious that most of these costs are related to Medicaid, or Medicare which are government funded, as we as taxpayers pay as well. Advertising costs are reimbursable for hospitals, HMO’s nursing homes, and home healthcare agencies, but the determination of which costs is a very grey area. Such costs that are under the HFCA are costs such as services related to patient care, telephone directory, and costs of activities involving professional contracts with physicians, hospitals, public health agencies, and other similar groups. Costs not included are costs of fund raising, including advertising, promotional, or publicity costs. Whose to say which or if any of these advertising expenses should be included or held reimbursable, but this is the way the government or the HFCA depicts them. In my opinion, I feel strongly that none of these advertisement costs should be reimbursed because of their such small role in better in making better healthcare standards. It is not that healthcare advertising should not exist, it is just it should not come out of taxpayers, as ourselves pockets. The bottom line is according to the American Hospital association is that “Health care organizations should be aware of applicable government regulations and restrictions on reimbursement for advertising expenditures”.

Economics of Health Care advertising

One of the problems is the conflict over the prescription of pharmaceuticals that arises between consumers and providers of managed healthcare.(Venture Capital Health Care edition). HMOs and other providers of managed healthcare typically charge consumers a fixed price and in return supply all of their other medical care, including prescription drugs. This moral hazard affects patients access to pharmaceuticals. Because HMOs bear the lions share of the cost of prescription drugs but receive only a fraction of the benefit, they do not have the correct incentive to provide the drugs that are optimal from the consumers point of view. Instead they may seek to minimize their expenditures on pharmaceuticals. In 1996, 24.4 perc

Some topics in this essay:
Health Care, Internal Medicine, CMS Marketing, Medicaid Medicare, According DTC, Advertising Advertising, Medicare Medicaid, Intro Healthcare, Paxil CR, Jacott MD, health care, prescription drugs, healthcare providers, prescription drug, healthcare advertising, consumer advertising, direct consumer, healthcare advertising exist, paxil cr, drugs drugs, consumer advertising prescription, pharmaceutical industry, rise healthcare providers, sought information source, direct consumer advertising,