Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12978
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
Leblanc S.
Senate president unveils plan to control health care costs
Associated Press 2008 Mar 3
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/03/03/senate_president_unveils_plan_to_control_health_care_costs/
Full text:
BOSTON-Massachusetts would be required to adopt a statewide electronic medical records system and be the first state to ban pharmaceutical marketing gifts under a bill unveiled by Senate President Therese Murray on Monday.
more stories like thisThe bill is also designed to rein in spiraling health care costs in part by authorizing a public review of any insurance company submitting rate increases of more than 7 percent a year.
The legislation would require the creation of the electronic medical records system by 2015, at a cost of about $25 million to taxpayers. Doctors would have to show competency in the technology for medical board registration.
“These initiatives will modernize the health care system, reduce waste and inefficiencies, and improve health care quality for every citizen of the Commonwealth,” said Murray, who outlined the bill at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
Murray said the bill follows on Massachusetts’ landmark 2006 law mandating all Massachusetts residents obtain health insurance or face tax penalties.
Under Murray’s bill, Massachusetts would also be the first to ban pharmaceutical marketing gifts, seen by critics as driving up the cost of prescription drugs. The bill bars representatives of pharmaceutical companies from offering gifts and bans physicians from accepting gifts of any kind.
The ban extends to physicians’ staff and family members. The legislation allows distribution of drug samples to doctors, as long as the samples are for the exclusive use of patients.
The bill also tries to control health care costs, seen as a threat to the success of the 2006 health care law, including requiring hospitals and insurance companies to justify consumer costs at public hearings.
The bill would also:
— Provide loan forgiveness programs for students wanting to become nurses or primary care physicians;
— Authorize the UMass Medical School to increase the class size of medical students and expand primary care programs and primary care residency training;
— Establish a Massachusetts Primary Care Recruitment Center to attract primary care providers to rural and underserved communities;
— Launch a medical malpractice study to investigate the high costs of medical malpractice coverage for health care providers.
The bill won the backing of health care advocates and providers.
Jean Leu, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Prescription Reform Coalition, said banning marketing gifts could help bring down the costs of brand name drugs.
“Pharmaceutical gifts undermine quality of care and unnecessarily increase prescribing of the most expensive drugs,” Leu said in a statement. “The cost of the gifts that pharmaceutical companies give physicians are passed on to consumers.”
Dr. Marylou Buyse, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, also applauded the bill, which she said launched the start of “an important conversation on health care costs.”
“The rising cost of health care is the challenge we all face,” said Buyse. “Health plans, hospitals and medical providers owe it to those who pay the bills — consumers, employers, municipalities and the state — to answer the question, ‘Why are your costs going up and what are you going to do about it?’”
Mike Webb, chairman of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, also welcomed the bill, but said the total ban on gifts could have unintended results.
“We are concerned about any measures, such as bans on interactions with physicians, which could negatively impact information flow to practitioners and ultimately hurt patient care,” Webb said.
