• Ad Age, Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:41 AM

The draft for health-care reform outlined by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee upholds the federal tax deduction for prescription-drug advertising, Merissa Miley reports. "This is a significant accomplishment, achieved in large part because of the outstanding grass-roots response of the advertising industry," Clark Rector, evp/government affairs for the American Advertising Federation, writes in a memo to members.

L.A. Times columnist Dan Neil had no fear for the drug ad tax deduction since, as he points out, Big Pharma "disgorged more than $234 million upon Capitol Hill last year." Of more pressing concern, however, is that the government might regulate the very life out of the advertising itself. With tongue imbedded so solidly in cheek that it must be a medical condition in search of a pill to cure it, he cites a Food and Drug Administration proposal for new rules about the presentation of "risk information."

"As a consumer of advertising, I dread the next generation of ads that warn me, in ever more vivid shades of hysteria, of the potential risks of dropsy, venereal forehead, explosive leg syndrome and chronic turkey neck resulting from my decongestant," he writes.

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