POINT: Policies restricting patient education are the wrong prescription

For more than four decades, I have navigated life managing a chronic disease. This experience comes with countless appointments, trying new medicines and learning to be my own advocate in a health system that can feel overwhelming for patients.

Along the way, I have discovered that staying informed isn't just helpful. It's survival. Over the years, I've learned to manage my condition by actively seeking out new treatments and engaging in thoughtful conversations with my doctors.

That's why I'm deeply concerned about proposals to add additional regulations that would effectively make direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements useless for patients.

One of the many ways I stay informed about the latest treatments is through drug ads, which provide information about treatments to me and many of the patients I work with. These ads are not perfect, but for patients, they are a genuine resource.

The push in Washington to further regulate drug ads misses how real patients actually navigate their healthcare. When living with and managing a chronic illness, the learning never stops - you want to constantly discover new treatments, pick up tips from fellow patients and find ways to alleviate symptoms. When a new treatment becomes available, I want to know about it.

I'm not alone. Throughout my decades of patient advocacy work, I've spoken with countless individuals managing autoimmune conditions, rare diseases and chronic pain - people who describe seeing a television ad or a magazine insert as the moment they finally had a name for what they were experiencing or learned that a treatment option existed. That kind of awareness has real effects on health outcomes.

Critics of drug advertising often point to cost, arguing that these ads drive up healthcare spending by pushing patients toward expensive branded medications. This argument doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that a significant share of the doctor visits prompted by pharmaceutical advertising result in prescriptions for non-advertised generic drugs, or no new prescription at all. In other words, patients who become curious enough to consult their doctor don't automatically walk out with a brand-name drug. They walk out better informed, which is precisely the point.

What drug advertising does is open a door. What happens next is a conversation between a patient and their physician, and that's the way healthcare decisions should be made. A 2025 Harris Poll survey found that 70% of respondents said they're "somewhat" or "very" likely to ask their doctor about a prescription medication after seeing an ad for it. Overregulating those ads doesn't lower costs or improve care. It threatens to close one of the few channels through which patients can independently access new information about their conditions.

Patient empowerment depends on access to information. When I was first diagnosed with lupus, I had almost no framework for understanding what my body was doing or what could be done about it. Over the years, I built that knowledge through every resource available to me, including medical journals, patient communities, advocacy organizations, and yes, drug advertisements. Each resource contributed to my ability to walk into a doctor's office as a partner in my own care rather than a passive recipient.

Policies that would further regulate pharmaceutical advertising send the opposite message. They suggest that patients cannot be trusted to evaluate information critically and that we need to be shielded from knowledge of our own treatment options. That paternalistic view is not only wrong, but it's harmful.

I care deeply about improving health outcomes both for myself and the patients I work with, and proposals to further restrict drug ads would not help any one of us. After 45 years, I know that managing a chronic illness requires every tool available. Stripping away one of those tools, particularly one that helps bridge the gap between medical advances and the patients who need them, would be a step backward for the millions of Americans living with conditions like mine.

On numerous occasions this year, former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary acknowledged the positive effect of FDA efforts to enforce drug ad regulations - and he is right. The current drug advertising framework is effective at keeping patients safe from harmful products, misleading claims and bad actors, while keeping us informed about new and emerging treatments that could provide genuine relief. Before policymakers in Washington move to restrict these drug ads, they should consider the perspective of the patients who rely on them to stay informed and engaged in their own care.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Dorothy Leone-Glasser is the executive director of Advocates for Responsible Care and Rx in Reach Coalition. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 4:16 AM.