If Health Care Advertising Is a Problem, FDA-Style Regulation Is Not the Solution

In “The Ethics of Advertising for Health Care Services” (2014), Schenker, Arnold, and London argue that advertisements for physicians, hospitals, and other health care services are morally problematic and ought to be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as it regulates prescription drug ads. I argue that the regulation of prescription drug ads has been so ineffective that, if the harms of health care service ads are similar to the harms of drug ads, such regulation is bound to fail. This is a major public health concern, because any good produced by these ads does not necessarily morally compensate for the harm caused. If the ads cannot be banned entirely, I propose a regulatory strategy that involves redesigning them from the ground up.