Day: December 6, 2025
Killing drug ads won’t lower prices — it will kill innovation
The United States is one of the few countries that allows prescription drugmakers to speak directly to patients. That simple fact now fuels political calls to “ban the ads.” But restricting direct-to-consumer advertising would do more than change what runs during football games. It would shrink the flow of information to patients and push our system toward the bureaucratic throttling that has turned other countries into innovation laggards.
Advertising is part of a dynamic market process. Entrepreneurs inform consumers about new products, and when profits are high, firms have every incentive to improve quality and expand access.
The pattern is clear: The more Washington intervenes, the fewer cures Americans get.
New, cheaper treatments need to be brought to consumers’ attention. Otherwise, people stay stuck with older, more expensive options, and competition falters. Banning pharmaceutical advertising would hobble innovative firms whose products are not yet known and leave those seeking medical care less informed.
Critics warn that “a growing proliferation of ads” drives demand for costly treatments, even when less expensive alternatives exist. Yet a recent study in the Journal of Public Economics finds that exposure to pharmaceutical ads increases drug utilization across the board — including cheaper generics and non-advertised medications. In short, advertising pushes people who need care to make better, more informed decisions.
A market-based system rewards risk-taking and innovation. Despite the many flaws in American health care, the United States leads the world in medical breakthroughs — from cancer immunotherapies to vaccines developed in record time. That success wasn’t created by government decree. It came from competition: firms communicating openly about their products, fighting for patients, and reinvesting earnings into the next generation of lifesaving discoveries.
Sure, some regulations are adopted with good intentions. But drug ads are already heavily regulated, and a full ban would create serious unintended consequences — including the unseen cost of innovative drugs that will never reach patients because firms won’t invest in developing treatments they are barred from promoting.
American health care is now regulated to the point of satisfying no one. Patients face rising costs. Physicians navigate a Kafkaesque maze of top-down rules. Taxpayers foot the bill for decisions made by distant bureaucracies. Measures associated with socialized medicine continue creeping into the marketplace.
Price controls in the Inflation Reduction Act are already cutting into pharmaceutical research and development. One study estimates roughly 188 fewer small-molecule treatments in the 20 years after its enactment. The pattern is clear: The more Washington intervenes, the fewer cures Americans get.
RELATED: Trump faces drugmakers that treat sick Americans like ATMs
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The answer to the problems in American health care isn’t more government. It’s less. Expected profitability drives investment in biomedical research. Imposing new advertising bans or European-style price controls would mean lower-quality care, higher mortality, and the erosion of America’s leadership in medical innovation.
The United Kingdom offers a warning. Once a global leader, it drove investment offshore through overregulation and rigid price controls. Today, only 37% of new medicines are made fully available for their licensed uses in Britain. Americans spend more, but they also live longer: U.S. cancer patients outlive their European counterparts for a reason.
Discovering new drugs is hard. Every breakthrough begins with the freedom to imagine, to compete, and to communicate. Strip companies of the ability to inform patients, and you strip away the incentive to develop the next cure. Competitive markets — not centralized control — will fuel tomorrow’s medical miracles.
Mark Levin drops the hammer: America isn’t rigged — your ideology is
One of the great beauties of America, says Mark Levin, is her lack of fixed social classes. With grit and determination, anyone from any background can rise in the ranks and become successful. That’s why America is the top country of origin for self-made millionaires and billionaires.
Now compare that to Marxist regimes, where the mantra is “you are what you are, and that’s where you’re going to stay.” Work ethic, intelligence, ambition don’t get you anywhere, unless, of course, you’re part of the government machine that crushes the people.
And yet the radical left and the neofascist right alike are pushing similar grievance politics that echo Marxist tactics — demanding more government to “fix” a rigged system. Progressives say, “If you’re a minority, the system is out to get you,” while “the neofascists [say] if you’re white, the system is out to get you,” says Levin, accusing both groups of “racializing” economics to the detriment of all.
“They want more and more government, which is the biggest problem we have,” he says.
But this push for more federal power is the folly of ideologues. “We conservatives are motivated by reality. … Our principles are based on knowledge and information and experience and reality — not a fanatical ideology,” says Levin.
“This ideology of Marxism and socialism, it’s been imposed on one society after another — imposed. And it’s a disastrous outcome in every case: poverty, often genocide, no civil liberties.”
But because the government holds all the power, the blame can’t be placed on the ruling class when everything inevitably goes to hell in a handbasket. Rather the people — powerless and crushed economically and in spirit — shoulder the blame.
But even though history lessons in failed socialism abound, still people like Robert Reich make capitalism the villain. Levin plays a clip of the former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton whining about McDonald’s high prices — the same complaint he made in 1994 — as proof that corporations are deliberately creating a permanent underclass.
Levin’s response is brutal and simple: “You were an idiot in 1994, and you’re an idiot today.” In the 31 years since Reich’s prophecy, millions of supposedly “left-behind” Americans started businesses, bought homes, and invested.
“Your life isn’t static. The economy is not static. Nothing is static. The fact is things keep turning along. Sometimes they go over a cliff; sometimes up to the stars,” says Levin, noting that his life has changed tremendously since 1994.
But if you really want to buy Reich’s argument that McDonald’s and “processed foods” are the problem, go ahead and ban them, he says.
Get rid of the Big Macs, the canned beans, the frozen pizzas, the mass-produced bread, the snacks — everything affordable and convenient. The result won’t be social justice; it’s “people starve to death,” says Levin.
The ideological war on private enterprise always ends up punishing the very people it claims to help — exactly the pattern Marxism has repeated from Moscow to Havana. America works, Levin concludes, precisely because we let people solve their own problems instead of letting utopian grifters in Washington or on social media tell them the system is rigged and only total government control can save them.
To hear more of his commentary, watch the video above.
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Thug attacks mother walking her toddler in stroller, cops say; 10 days later — on Thanksgiving — he’s accused of even worse
An 18-year-old New Jersey male is accused of approaching a woman from behind while she was walking her 2-year-old in a stroller — and then putting her in a chokehold and throwing her to the ground.
The incident took place Nov. 17 on Pinewood Road, Howell Township Police said. Howell is a little over 30 minutes east of Trenton.
‘Off with his head!!! Do this the old school way; we don’t need people in … society like that!!!!’
According to News 12 New Jersey, police said the suspect ran off after the woman screamed for help.
Photo by Bob Carey/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Jaden Thompson of Freehold was criminally charged Tuesday for endangering the welfare of a child (3rd degree) and simple assault (Disorderly Persons Offense), police said.
But there was no need to lock up Thompson.
Turns out he already was behind bars in the Ocean County Jail as of Nov. 29 on unrelated criminal charges, police said.
What else is he accused of doing?
According to Jackson Police, just after 11:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving, officers responded to the Paragon apartments at 1020 Larsen Road for a report of a female who had been stabbed by an ex-boyfriend. Jackson is about three miles west of Howell Township.
A family member of the stabbing victim told police that Thompson was the ex-boyfriend and that he carried out the stabbing.
It was determined that Thompson was arguing with the victim when he stabbed her in the lower abdomen, police said, adding that he then fled the area in a vehicle believed to be a black 2012 Nissan Altima.
After a two-day search with the assistance of U.S. Marshalls, the suspect was located in Edison, police said. Edison is almost an hour northeast of Trenton.
Police said Thompson crashed the car following a vehicle chase. After he fled the crash scene, police quickly apprehended him and transferred him to the custody of Jackson Police.
In connection with the stabbing incident, police said Thompson was charged with:
- Attempted murder (1st degree)
- Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (2nd degree)
- Endangering the welfare of a child (2nd degree)
- Possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose (3rd degree)
- Unlawful possession of a weapon (4th degree)
- Criminal trespass
Some commenters under the Jackson Police Department’s Facebook post about the stabbing seemed as though they’ve had about enough:
- “Sad that we have come to the crossroads,” one commenter wrote, adding that “the people in town need to really take a stand against this degradation of our community.”
- “Hope he rots in 666,” another user said.
- “Off with his head!!!” another commenter exclaimed. “Do this the old school way; we don’t need people in … society like that!!!!”
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