Boston--MASSPIRG praised the action of the Massachusetts Senate on Thursday April
17, who adopted much needed prescription
drug marketing reforms as part of the Senate President’s Health Care Cost
Control Bill, S. 2650, An Act to Promote Cost
Containment, Transparency and Efficiency in the Delivery of Quality Health Care. Despite fierce opposition from drug company
lobbyists, the senate voted 36-0 to curb rx company marketing by adopting a
bill which includes a pharmaceutical gift ban and licensing requirement, and
the adoption of an academic detailing program. MASSPIRG commends the leadership of Senate
President Murray, and Senators Moore and Montigny in protecting consumers from
excessive, costly and sometimes dangerous influence of drug company marketers.
Pharmaceutical Gift Ban and Licensing
The pharmaceutical industry spends over $7 billion annually marketing
to physicians. A staggering 94% of
physicians receive meals and other payments from pharmaceutical companies. The
senate passed bill prohibits pharmaceutical and medical device companies from
giving gifts to physicians. The bill
also requires all drug “detailers” working in the state to be licensed, which is
critical to facilitating enforcement of the gift ban.
Industry gifts contribute significantly to rising health
care costs. The cost of marketing is
passed along in the price of prescription drugs. Marketing also promotes prescribing of more
expensive drugs in place of equally safe and effective lower cost drugs, which
may be either other brand name drugs or generic drugs.
Gifts also threaten quality of care. Gifts and financial incentives from pharmaceutical
companies create conflicts of interests that interfere with the ability of
health care providers to make prescribing decisions based only on the needs of
their patient.
All gifts influence prescribing decisions. Token gifts including company logos drive up
name recognition and even small gifts create demands for reciprocity. The pharmaceutical industry would not spend
billions of dollars each year marketing to physicians if it didn’t increase
sales. (Journal of the American Medical
Association).
Recognizing the inappropriate influence of pharmaceutical
gifts, Minnesota, Vermont,
Maine, West Virginia
and the District of Columbia
have taken legislative action. In Massachusetts, Boston University School
of Medicine/Boston Medical Center
and UMass Memorial Health Care recently announced new conflict-of-interest
policies that ban clinicians from accepting personal gifts and meals from
pharmaceutical companies.
Academic Detailing
The
bill directs the Department of Public Health to establish an “academic
detailing” program through which medical professionals would provide
evidence-based, balanced information about the effectiveness, safety and costs of
prescription drugs to physicians and other prescribers in face-to-face
visits. Currently, industry salespeople
are the primary source of providers’ information about medications. The result is inflated industry influence on
prescribing. Academic detailing is
similar to pharmaceutical sales visits, except that the academic detailers do
not promote a particular product.
Academic detailing promotes evidence-based medicine by providing
prescribers with unbiased data rather than promotional information.
Academic detailing improves quality of care. Academic detailers are medical professionals
that provide physicians with unbiased data they need to make appropriate
prescribing decisions, unlike pharmaceutical sales representatives that provide
promotional information.
Academic detailing programs also control costs. Information from academic detailers help
providers identify when less expensive but equally safe and effective drugs are
available. Savings of $8.3 billion would
result if adults appropriately substituted generics for brand names. Research
demonstrates that academic detailing programs can save two dollars for every
dollar spent to implement such programs.
“The cost of prescription drugs is among the fastest growing
segments of health care spending.
Between 2000 and 2007 the price many of the most commonly prescribed
brand name drugs rose by nearly 50%, far exceeding inflation. These rising costs result in higher health
care premiums, threaten the stability of health care reform, and threaten
people’s ability to access the medications that they need to maintain their
health,” said Deirdre Cummings,
Legislative Director with MASSPIRG.
