USA: De como gastar 20 billones al año en Marketing farmacéutico

Despite all the job cuts for drug reps, despite the endless stream of TV drug ads, the pharma industry still spends most of its U.S. marketing money the old-fashioned way: Paying salespeople to call on doctors and other health-care providers.

Drug companies spent “at least $20.5 billion in marketing” in 2008, the CBO said in a research brief published yesterday. (That figure doesn’t include the value of free drug samples companies give to docs, by the way.) The big categories include:

$12 billion for “detailing,” the industry term for sending sales reps to talk to doctors, nurses and other providers. Spending on detailing was highest for statins (such as Pfizer’s Lipitor), antidepressants (like Forest’s Lexapro) and antipsychotics (like Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Abilify). In each of those categories, branded drugs are competing against generics for a big market.

$4.7 billion direct-to-consumer advertising, and an additional $400 million on advertising in professional journals. CBO took a closer look at consumer advertising for about 2,000 drugs and found that TV ads accounted for 62% of spending, print ads made up 35% and online ads were 4% (those figures add up to 101% because we rounded to the nearest percentage point).

$3.4 billion sponsoring professional meetings and events. This includes sponsoring courses and talks that doctors can attend (or watch online) in order to satisfy requirements for continuing medical education (known as CME). Industry-funding of CME has been getting some attention in Congress lately, with some lawmakers calling for public disclosure of who pays for what