Massachusetts prescription law

Beantown? More like, Thanks for the offer of free beans mr. drug rep but no thanks town!

And by that I mean: Massachusetts is trying to get their anti-prescription-data-mining grooooove on!

Which can obviously be translated into: the home of Paul Revere is making a good faith effort to limit the marketing influence of pharmaceutical companies on physicians. You can see the entire bill here. But as they say in blogging and other sleazy industries, here's the money graf:

G. Before utilizing health care practitioner prescriber data for marketing purposes, manufacturers must give health care practitioners the opportunity to request that their prescriber data :
i. be withheld from company sales representatives, and
ii. not be used for marketing purposes.

H. Nothing in this section shall prohibit pharmaceutical manufacturing companies from using prescriber data to:
i. impart important safety and risk information to prescribers of a particular drug or device;
ii. conduct research;
iii. comply with FDA mandated risk management plans that require manufacturers to identify and interact with health care practitioners who prescribe certain drugs or devices; or
iv. track adverse events of marketed dugs, biologics or devices.

At first glance it looks great. I'm reading section G, and I'm seeing that Pfizer has to come to me and ask my permission before using my prescription data. It's sounding good.

But I stroll over to section H, and now Pfizer is allowed to use my prescription data, to "impart safety and risk information."

Now, I don't want to offend anyone by impuning the integrity of pharmaceutical companies. But wouldn't Pfizer argue that all those free lunches and dinners are "impart[ing] safety and risk information"?

By which I mean to say: can't they continue to operate exactly as they have been?

Sure, I get it, that's not how the law was intended. But I have a feeling that the lawyers who work for Eli Lilly are going to choose to interpret this law in a way that let's them do exactly what they've always done.....

Thanks for the anecdote, Tara!

Here's the opening graf of a recent New York Times piece on health.

Recently, I went to the drugstore to fill a prescription. Instead, I left with a costly lesson in health care economics.

At the checkout, I was surprised when the clerk billed me for $100 instead of my usual small co-payment. It was only then that I realized my doctor had traded me up to a costly branded migraine drug, even though the old drug had worked just fine. And I had allowed it.

This article has nothing to do with prescription data-mining. At least it thinks it doesn't. The writer seems blissfully unaware of drug reps, and their ability to find out every detail of a physician's prescribing habits. Hence the title of the article, "A Hurdle for Health Reform: Patients and Their Doctors".

But please, Ms. Tara Parker-Pope, tell us how your doctor made the decision to switch from the cheap generic to the expensive brand name? Why did she decide you needed a more expensive drug when the old one was working just fine?

Odds are, the pharmaceutical industry got to Ms. Parker-Pope's doctor somehow. A free lunch, a free mug, a few note pads at a medical conference. And suddenly the catchy brand name was stuck in her head.

Did this doctor think she was hurting anyone by switching to a "newer" and "better" medicine? Quite the opposite. And yet the doctor ended up saddling a poor underpaid NYT blogger with a fat co-pay she can't afford.

We doctors have to stop pretending that medicine and money aren't intertwined. And that free gifts from pharmaceutical reps don't affect us.

NY Prescription Data-Mining Bill

I know you're excited. It's here.