The baby boomer population is aging, and because older people generally need more medication the demand for prescription medication is increasing exponentially. Everyone who has taken a high school civics class knows the basic rule of economy: if demand goes up so does price. This encourages companies to charge high prices; they know they can because people need medicine and will pay for it.

It is true that the field of medicine is ever-advancing and that new drugs generally cost more. In addition, certain illnesses such as cancer or Alzheimer’s are just more expensive to treat. Because the company with the most advanced medicine sells the most product, pharmaceutical companies put a lot of effort and money into research. Research is important to the field of medicine; it leads to the cures for diseases and more effective drugs. However, there is nothing to fund research except sales, so prescriptions become more expensive.

The main people who decide whether or not a certain medication will sell are doctors. Every time a patient comes to them with an ailment, a doctor has a choice of many medications to prescribe. Of course, each company wants their medication to be the main choice. As a result pharmaceutical companies spend astronomical sums of money trying to convince doctors to sell their products. Most patients can recall at least one time when they have entered or left their doctor’s office and seen a pharmaceutical representative handing out free trials of different medicines, free pens and note pads. They also take doctors to dinner and spend thousands on free gifts. This can be beneficial to the consumer: doctors often give out plenty of free samples to save consumers from having to pay for prescriptions. In order to finance all these persuasive techniques, however, companies need money and that also comes from prescription sales.

Since the Food and Drug Administration relaxed the laws that regulate advertising for medicines in 1997, companies have found another market; the American public. In an attempt to outsell their competitors, companies buy television commercials and magazine ads for different drugs. Again, this can be beneficial because it lets customers know that there are more medicines that can potentially solve their problems out there. The advertising budget also has to come from sales, though. All these factors put together make prescriptions rather expensive.