Healthy Marketing?

The FTC’s recent announcement condemning the indoor tanning industry for deceptive advertising tactics plainly illustrates an important consideration for anyone who has or seeks health insurance: your personal habits can have a profound influence on your health risk factors, and therefore your health insurance costs. In its complaint, the FTC takes special care to point out that frequent, long-term exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation (such as that generated by the lamps in tanning booths) can increase cancer risk and inflict serious damage to the eyes. More disturbingly, the report also accuses indoor tanning companies of deliberately misleading the public through its advertising, portraying their services as a healthier alternative to natural sunlight.

This announcement came just on the heels of another, reported by the FTC less than three weeks earlier, describing a federal court’s recent judgment against the manufacturers of a few “herbal” weight-loss products. The court ordered Bronson Partners, LLC to pay almost two million dollars in punitive damages for misleading claims about the efficacy of products like “Bio-Slim Patch” and “Chinese Diet Tea.” While such findings can be helpful in putting fraudsters out of commission and directing consumers away from fraudulent products, it’s important to note that for every company that is duly reprimanded there are often several that escape correction.

Underlying these events is one simple and enduring principle: when it comes to important matters like your health, you should never take advertising at face value. Generally speaking, one should be wary of any product or treatment that claims to be a “natural” or “herbal” equivalent to an existing prescription drug, and particularly skeptical of those that suggest possible benefits which conventional medications can’t currently replicate. The vast majority of these products eventually turn out to be expensive placebos, in the best case; in rare situations, they could even inflict serious and lasting harm. As long as you’re willing to use some skepticism, however, you should be able to see through most deceptive marketing tactics that surround such products.