Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15368
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
CVS Caremark's Objectionable Drug Marketing Practices Raised at Massachusetts Joint Committee on Health Care Financing Hearing Today, According to CtW
Pharma Live 2009 Mar 26
http://pharmalive.com/news/index.cfm?articleID=614723
Abstract:
Bills Would Outlaw Practice of Selling, Using or Sharing Prescription Data for Marketing Purposes
Full text:
Questions about CVS Caremark’s objectionable drug marketing practices are being raised today by Massachusetts lawmakers who seek to outlaw the practice of selling, sharing or using patient and prescriber identifiable prescription information for marketing purposes. Some retail pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), like CVS Caremark, use or sell prescription data in exchange for payments for marketing for drug companies and other purposes.
“This legislation is necessary to stop companies like CVS Caremark from using prescription data for marketing purposes, which threatens our healthcare system and privacy,” said Jasmin Weaver, Healthcare Initiatives Legislative Director at Change to Win, during oral testimony at today’s joint committee hearing.
CVS Caremark’s Troubling Access to, Use of Private Patient Data
CVS Caremark provides prescriptions or other services to half of all Americans. CVS Caremark has access to patients’ private information from an estimated 30 percent of all prescriptions in the country, or 1.2 billion prescriptions annually.
CVS, the nation’s largest chain of retail pharmacies, merged with Caremark, the country’s second largest pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) in 2007 to become the largest purchaser and provider of prescriptions in the United States and now has unprecedented access to consumers’ private patient data.
CVS Caremark’s Questionable RxReview, Clinical Consulting Programs
CVS Caremark uses patient and physician data to promote drugs on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. For example, CVS Caremark sends letters to doctors promoting particular drugs as part of its RxReview program. These letters are paid for by drug makers and are not necessarily geared to saving money for health plans or consumers.
According to doctors who have received RxReview letters, the letters identify the doctor’s patients by name, patient identification number, date of birth and prescription drug history and suggests the patients might be candidates for other, sometimes more expensive drugs, like Januvia, which is as much as eight times more expensive than other diabetes treatments. According to some doctors, RxReview suggested Januvia for patients regardless of whether those patients had characteristics that made them inappropriate candidates for Januvia. Consumer Reports recommends other, lower-cost generic drugs over Januvia and says that Januvia is less effective than other diabetes medications. Nonetheless, CVS Caremark’s promotion activity helps Merck maximize its revenues-recently Merck announced that Januvia sales jumped 64% to $413 million in the last quarter, even as other marquee drugs saw big sales declines.
CVS Caremark also uses prescription data to support its Clinical Consulting program, which is supported by funding from pharmaceutical companies. Through this program CVS Caremark sends out hundreds of pharmacists to visit 20,000 of the nation’s “top prescribing physicians” an average of eight times a year to market specific drugs-or “influence prescribing behaviors” by reviewing detailed plan participant data and discussing opportunities for changing the prescribed therapy.
This method is effective because, as CVS Caremark itself says, research has shown that doctors who are unwilling to listen to drug company sales representatives are willing to speak to pharmacists: “According to a recent independent physician survey, the average discussion a Clinical Consultant has with a physician lasts 12 minutes-compared to the 2 to 3 minutes typically allotted by physicians to pharmaceutical sales representatives.”
Massachusetts Legislature Acts to Outlaw Prescription Privacy Abuse
House Bills 109 and 110 and Senate Bills 17 and 19 take important steps to protect Massachusetts residents’ health care and privacy by preventing certain prescription data from being used, sold, or shared for marketing purposes. This year, Massachusetts joins more than one dozen states considering legislation to strengthen patient privacy protections, including Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Texas.
PBMs operate in a weak regulatory environment at both the state and federal levels. Legislative reform is vital to ensuring that CVS Caremark does business honestly and with the best interests of plans and plan members as its top priority.
For more information, visit: www.AlarmedAboutCVSCaremark.org.
Alarmed About CVS Caremark is a Change to Win initiative to educate health plan managers and trustees as well as consumers about the newly merged CVS Caremark, now the country’s second largest pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) and largest retail pharmacy chain. Change to Win represents workers in CVS Caremark plans that cover more than 10 million people. On behalf of these health plan members, our initiative seeks legislative reform of the PBM industry to protect plan members’ health and privacy.
