Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17649

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

Bookwalter G
Assemblyman Bill Monning pulls his pharmaceutical bill
The Santa Cruz Sentinel 2010 Apr 17
http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20100417/NEWS01/4170310/1002/Assemblyman-Bill-Monning-pulls-his-pharmaceutical-bil

Abstract:

Assemblyman says he will use time to rally support for next year

Full text:

Realizing it did not have the necessary votes to pass, Assemblyman Bill Monning this week shelved his bill that would have reined in the sale of doctors’ prescription records for marketing purposes.

Monning, D-Carmel, said he might reintroduce the bill, aimed at big pharmaceutical companies, in January if he can drum up enough support.

“We’re going to use this time frame to build more support and do more outreach,” Monning said. He pulled the bill just before it was to go to a vote on Tuesday in the Assembly’s Committee on Health after realizing that the votes he thought were lined up, were not.

“We didn’t have the time to cultivate members’ understandings of the issues,” Monning said. “There’s some intricacies.”

Assembly Bill 2112 followed efforts in other states to limit the information available to drug makers that, some say, use the data to push their products instead of what’s best or most cost-effective for patients. The bill was modeled after a similar law in New Hampshire.

Monning said access to a doctor’s prescribing habits allows drug companies to target physicians who might be more receptive to their sales pitches.

The California Medical Association and AARP California, among other groups, supported the bill.

Pharmaceutical industry groups and “data mining” companies – third-party firms that crunch and sell information obtained from pharmacies, doctor groups and other sources – spoke out against it.

Drug companies argued that possessing an individual physician’s prescribing data allows them to reach doctors quickly and directly with unique information they might not otherwise get.