Study Shows Significant Increase In Medical Marketing Spending Over Past 2 Decades

It's all too familiar — you're watching your favorite TV show, then it goes to a commercial break, and you see drug ads for everything from bipolar depression to severe rheumatoid arthritis.

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that spending on medical marketing skyrocketed from $17.7 billion in 1997 to $29.9 billion in 2016, and that spending on advertising directly to patients rose the fastest.

Dr. Steven Woloshin, physician, professor and researcher at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.