RFK Jr. Continues To Fail To Do The One Good Thing He Said He Was Going To Do

We remain a nation plagued by extremely annoying pharmaceutical ads.

Skyrizi commercial screenshot

You know what I would really like? To go a whole week without getting that smug and weirdly breathy Skyrizi jingle stuck in my head. You know, the “Nothing is everythi-hi-hi-hing” one? I am haunted by it. What kind of monster pronounces the individual “h” in “everything?” Just people singing about psoriasis, I guess. Whatever it is, I hate it so much. That and the weirdly triumphant Wegovy song where the only lyric is “Wegovy.”

Is this a sign that I watch too much television? Maybe. But that’s not the only reason I wish these commercials would go away forever — I also hate them because they drive up the cost of pharmaceuticals that people need to survive. In 2023 alone, the top 10 pharmaceutical manufacturers spent $13.8 billion on advertising, and if you recall, that was the year we were all first introduced to the daily nightmare of “the little pill with a story to tell.”

I’m glad that lady lowered her A1C, she seems very happy about it, but if she could just calm the fuck down, that would be great and we’d all appreciate it.

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One of the few not-terrible things that RFK Jr. promised to do even before Trump was elected again was to end pharmaceutical ads, likely by once again requiring these companies to list all of the known side effects in every ad — which would make a lot of them about 4 minutes long and thus not particularly conducive to ad spots like these, nevermind full-blown musicals.

However, as NOTUS reports, that’s fallen to the wayside, as he’s apparently just entirely focused on pretending that vaccines cause autism and cutting back on the kind of regulations that prevent us all from getting explosive diarrhea from a Crunchwrap Supreme.

Via NOTUS:

Two days before the 2024 general election, Kennedy promised to halt the prescription drug ads millions of Americans see on their screens every day.

“Let’s get President Trump back in the White House and me to DC so we can ban pharmaceutical advertising,” he wrote on X. […]

The United States is one of just two countries that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Ad spending spiked after 1997, when the FDA issued guidance allowing companies to summarize a medication’s risks briefly enough to fit into a 30-second TV spot.

Kennedy could easily rescind that guidance, experts said, although it would almost certainly be challenged in court by drugmakers.

But he hasn’t. If anything, the ads have increased. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I endured a commercial break without being encouraged to “emerge Tremfyant”

I will not, please and thank you. Also, I’m very confused by the stomach weeds.

Tremfya ad

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The trash editorial board of the Washington Post decried the idea of increasing regulations on pharmaceutical ads, on the grounds that they alert people to chronic conditions they may not have even known they have (also because they are obligated to love capitalism in all its forms, as per Jeff Bezos’s mandate). However, given that half the time we can’t even tell what conditions these ads are even for, that seems unlikely. Also, if these ads continue to increase the price of medications, it won’t matter if people know they have those conditions or not because they won’t be able to afford to treat them.

This administration is pretty far from the plan to “Make America Healthy Again,” given all the measles and the explosive diarrhea and what have you, so it would be nice if they could maybe do one thing that wasn’t shitty. Pun intended.