Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19954

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

US Moves to Curb Some Drug Promotions
The New York Times 1998 Jan 6
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/06/business/us-moves-to-curb-some-drug-promotions.html

Full text:

Concerned about possible misleading drug promotion, the Government moved today to insure that drug companies do not unfairly promote their products through managed care.

At issue is how companies — called pharmacy benefits managers — influence doctors, pharmacists and patients in choosing particular medicines. Often, they persuade doctors to switch their patients from one drug to another by arguing the cheaper drug is just as effective.

But the Food and Drug Administration says pharmacy benefits managers, known as P.B.M.‘s, sometimes give doctors and pharmacists false or biased information. Today, the F.D.A. proposed regulating P.B.M.‘s that are owned by drug manufacturers to insure they provide accurate information.

Manufacturer-owned P.B.M.‘s would have to submit promotional material to the F.D.A. for an accuracy review, just as drug manufacturers already submit their own advertising. The new proposal means manufacturers cannot illegally promote their products under the guise of a managed care company.

Drug manufacturers that do not own P.B.M.‘s but have financial agreements with them could also be responsible for illegal drug promotion, the proposal says.