[stephenhess]

One aspect that I haven't seen mentioned here is that these ads are also designed to improve patient adherence. So you have 30 million prescriptions of zoloft prescribed in the US every year (crazy right?) but there's a lot of money left on the table when folks don't refill. The ads are reminders to these people to go get that refill and get back on their meds. For people with asthma, diabetes and hypertension, non-adherence can be really unhealthy and leads to hundreds of billions in unnecessary cost to the healthcare system.

[peteretep]

I think this needs hard evidence to back up - is adherence much worse in the UK where ads like this are banned?