Pfizer Public Affairs
GCW's public affairs work put drug switching on the news agenda — the practice of insurers pushing generics over name brands, and what it cost one Central Texas family's children.
The high cost of healthcare has many insurance companies insisting on generic drugs over name brands. For one Central Texas family, that decision proved costly to their children's health — and that family's story became the way into a policy argument that is otherwise abstract.
GCW built the public affairs campaign around it. Leander Family Battles Insurance Company Over Generic Drugs put a household at the centre of the issue; Drug Switching: Money or Medicine? put the question to the people qualified to answer it.
Doctors and their patients argued, on the record, that pharmaceutical switching is a decision based on money rather than medicine. Getting clinicians to say that in public — rather than having a manufacturer say it for them — is what made the coverage land.
Results
- Drug switching established as a consumer health story, not just an industry dispute
- Physicians and patients on the record on the money-versus-medicine question
- A single family's case carried into national public affairs coverage
