Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15577

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

Gram D.
Vt. House working on expanded drug disclosure bill
Forbes.com 2009 May 1
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/05/01/ap6367240.html

Full text:

Vermont lawmakers want to make it much tougher for drug company sales representatives to court doctors with free lunches and other perks designed to get their products into patients’ medicine cabinets.

They are considering a bill that would impose stricter limits on drug companies’ direct sales pitches to health providers and require public disclosure whenever sales reps makes their rounds.

The House Health Committee on Thursday put its finishing touches on a Senate-passed bill that would toughen a disclosure bill first passed in 2002.

The work came two weeks after Attorney General William Sorrell’s office issued its annual report on drug marketing efforts in the state. The report said drug companies spent nearly $3 million in Vermont in consulting fees, meals, gifts and similar expenses directed at doctors and other prescribers in the year ended June 30.

One doctor received more than $15,000 worth of free meals during that year, according to the report. More than 200 doctors received more than $500 worth of free food each, it said.

But under a “trade secrets exemption” in the 2002 law, the attorney general couldn’t say who was paying for or getting the food, cash payments and other gifts.

“It makes sense that Vermonters be able to see how much, if any, individual doctors are receiving in cash payments and from the manufacturers of which particular drugs,” Sorrell said.

The attorney general said the gifts create at least the perception of a conflict of interest.