Two items in the news recently highlighted proposed legislation to limit the influence of drug companies on physicians - and therefore, on consumers as well.
The Boston Globe reports on a proposed state law that would ban all gifts to doctors from drug companies.
"Other states have passed laws attempting to limit the pharmaceutical industry's influence. In Minnesota, legislators enacted a ban on gifts in excess of $50 from pharmaceutical companies. In Vermont, legislators have passed laws requiring pharmaceutical company representatives to disclose the dollar value of gifts over $25 to doctors. Peggy Kerns, director of the ethics center at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, said Murray's legislation is the first attempt at an outright ban on gifts to doctors that she had heard of."
Then, the Integrity in Science Watch project reports that:
Legislation that would send government-funded educators into doctors’ offices with independent information about prescription drugs received a boost last week at a Senate Committee on Aging hearing. “Pharmaceutical sales reps (known as detailers) are currently one of the only ways doctors can learn about the latest drugs on the market,� said Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI). “These sales reps often confuse educating with selling, and evidence shows that doctors’ prescribing patterns can be heavily influenced by the biased information often put forth by these sales representatives.� Experimental programs that send scientific professionals with clinical training into physicians’ office to provide them with objective, unbiased information – sometimes known as academic detailing – are now underway in five states and the District of Columbia. Kohl and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will introduce legislation that would create a federal academic detailing program later this spring.Posted by schwitz at March 19, 2008 08:09 AM | TrackBackThe program is a potential moneysaver for the federal government, which added a senior citizen drug benefit to Medicare in 2003 and spent an estimated $47 billion on the program last year. Pennsylvania’s academic detailing program reduced the total cost of patient prescription by $60 per physician in the six months after an academic detailer’s visit, according to Nora Dowd Eisenhower, head of the state’s Department of Aging. Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School told the committee that an experimental academic detailing program that reached 400 doctors in four states saved $2 for every $1 in costs. “Research has shown that when doctors have full access to comprehensive and unbiased data on all the drugs available, they prescribe the best drug--not just the newest one--and healthcare spending is lowered,� said Kohl. The pharmaceutical industry spends an estimated $7 billion a year on direct-to-physician marketing, employing over 80,000 detailers to reach the nation’s 700,000 practicing physicians.