The Fact
A JAMA analysis estimated that total U.S. medical marketing spending on drugs, disease-awareness campaigns, health services, and laboratory testing increased from $17.7 billion in 1997 to $29.9 billion in 2016, measured in 2016 dollars.
What This Means
Healthcare is also a marketing environment. Over this period, substantially more money was spent trying to influence attention and demand around medical products and services, not only delivering the care itself.
Sources
- Schwartz LM, Woloshin S. Medical Marketing in the United States, 1997-2016. JAMA. 2019;321(1):80-96.