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As much as we are inundated with daily exposures of corporate greed and profiteering, this expose on the consumer marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry was an eye opener.

We've all seen ads for drugs proliferate in the last few years. But, until we saw "Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs," we never realized the full breadth of the insidious marketing strategies of Big Pharma.

Frankly, it kind of takes your breath away.

Although it has long been the basic tenet of American consumerism that advertising is built upon persuading potential buyers to feel that they need something that they don't really have to have, it's startling -- to say the least -- to see this tactic applied to medications.

Furthermore, the pharmacy companies play "games" by repackaging drugs with the most minor of changes and creating consumer-driven demand for name-brand products that are much more expensive than comparable generics. They even create new syndromes, which they then persuade consumers that there is a need for treating these "maladies" with an expensive pill.

"Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain.

Focusing on the industry's marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors. Combined, these industry practices shape how both patients and doctors understand and relate to disease and treatment.

Ultimately, Big Bucks, Big Pharma challenges us to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being."

Narrated by Amy Goodman, this is a power-packed documentary with a punch.

"Big Bucks, Big Pharma" rips away the industry claim that they charge high prices for medications only because they are nobly interested in research that will bring new miracle drugs to the marketplace.

In fact, high prices are often now driven by creating what is called a "push-pull" demand, in which consumers ask doctors to prescribe medications based on advertisements that the former has seen in the media. Many of these prescriptions are for symptoms that might not even need medication -- or for drugs that could be replaced with far less expensive generic pills.

In short, the pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off. Selling medications to consumers to them is basically no different than selling us Big Macs -- very, very expensive Big Macs.

It is, in essence, a scam.

Yes, we are to be thankful for medications that do wonderful things for people with physical diseases and mental health problems. But the industry that created effective pharmaceuticals decided that it wasn't enough to treat actual diseases; it would profit even more if it could persuade us that expensive drugs treated phantom diseases -- or highly-profitable "repackaged" drugs were more effective than their generic counterparts.

With healthcare costs being an increasing burden on Americans, the pharmaceutical industry is -- this film leaves no doubt -- ripping us off right and left.

And they have billions of dollars in profits to keep Congress from doing anything about it.



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