The People Have Spoken: The Drug Industry Doesn’t Serve Us Well

The drug industry must be thanking its lucky stars that it doesn’t have to get reelected to the job of providing medications to people in the United States. For, if it did face that sort of public accountability, it just got voted out of office.

The Harris Poll, one of the country’s most respected polling organizations, has just published its annual poll on public attitudes toward some of the major industries in this country. Each year, Harris surveys about 1,000 people by telephone, asking them whether they generally believe that 15 particular industries are doing “a good or bad job of serving their consumers.” Industries other than health care included in the survey were supermarkets, airlines, banks and oil companies.

Among the health care industries inquired about, only hospitals received the endorsement of a majority of those surveyed (70%). Pharmaceutical companies followed with a 44% favorable rating. Health insurance companies fared still worse with a 36% favorable rating and managed care companies ranked last (with the tobacco industry!) at 30%. (In fairness, the tobacco companies had a 60% unfavorable rating compared to 53% for managed care companies, the difference accounted for by people who were not sure or refused to answer.) While the hospital industry ranked seventh, the three remaining health care industries ranked between 11 and 15.

But any politician worth his or her salt (or campaign contribution) knows that as important as favorable ratings are the trends in those ratings over time. From that perspective, the drug industry is in crisis.

Back in the industry’s salad days in 1997, a full 79% of those surveyed professed a favorable attitude toward the drug companies. But since then the industry has experienced a downward spiral, losing support every year but one. The 35% drop in its favorable rating between 1997 and 2004 is a larger drop than every other industry, although the managed care
(-21%) and health insurance industries (-19%) were in hot pursuit. (Interestingly, the industries together lost a median of 8% support over this period, with every industry losing some support, suggesting that something more fundamental in attitudes toward corporations is also occurring.) It appears that this is the first year in which more people had an unfavorable than a favorable attitude toward the drug companies.

It seems that the public is finally getting wise to machinations of drug companies. Years of price-gouging, doctor-bribing and political-power purchasing are taking their toll. If only there were a way to get a drug industry recall petition on the November ballot.