Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18406

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

Syre S
It's all about the jobs
Boston.com 2010 July 6
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/07/06/restaurants_say_drug_firm_rules_cost_jobs/

Full text:

Bad economies that collide with election years produce a lot of political talk about three things: jobs, jobs, jobs.

Every elected official is trying to create jobs or save them. Every candidate promises to fight for them. Controversial initiatives have a better shot if they can be spun as job generators. Casino opponents apparently will have to hold their noses because the gambling meccas will create jobs, even if most of those positions won’t actually materialize for several years.

Now comes another group with a jobs agenda: restaurateurs.

Owners of restaurants say they took their lumps through the recession and passed along a higher meals tax along the way. But the issue that really sets some of them off is the state’s year-old law that limits marketing by pharmaceutical companies to doctors. It made it illegal for drug companies to wine and dine docs away from the office.

“This is a huge thing,’’ says Steve DiFillippo, the owners of Davio’s in Boston. “It just makes no sense.’’

DiFillippo and other restaurant owners complain they’ve lost big money in function business at a tough time. The Massachusetts Restaurant Association argues that it’s terrible economics. And, of course, it’s about jobs.

Restaurateurs went to the state Senate looking for an opportunity to derail the law. which marked its first anniversary last week. No soap. But they got a better reception in the House and now an amendment to a much larger economic development bill would largely reverse the meal ban. Legislative action is possible this week.

That amendment would allow drug companies to host doctors at dinners with some restrictions: No spouses or guests, and some kind of information presentation must take place.

The law that restricted pharmaceutical marketing in the first place contained elements that made sense, especially requirements to disclose many types of payments doctors received for consulting and speaking engagements. Those can shed light on some serious abuse. In comparison, dinner and a technical pitch about the virtues of a new drug always seemed like tepid temptation.

A Legislature prepared to embrace the jobs that come with a vice like casino gambling might think harder about total economic impact of a doctor and a dinner.

Jack Shields, the longtime president of Shields Health Care Group, has left the Quincy company to start a venture making private investments in the medical business.

Shields, who led the group for more than two decades, put in his final day last week. His brother, Tom Shields, has taken over as president of the imaging and diagnostic company with 35 offices.

For now and the foreseeable future, the new JShields Capital Group will have one client: Jack Shields. He sees today’s turbulent times for health care as an ideal opportunity for investors.

That can mean a lot of things. Shields, 48, has a particular interest in companies that help health care providers cut costs. But a website for his new investment firm highlights venture, private equity, real estate, and other investing interests.

Shields compares the current combination of a poor economy and uncertainty in the health care industry to similar conditions in 1990, when, he says, Shields Health Care made big investments in expansion that turned out to be opportunistic.

The economy looks shaky and the market for new initial public stock offerings is about to shut down for the summer. Does this sounds like the time for a little bank to go public?

Well, no, but that isn’t stopping Peoples Federal Bancshares of Brighton. The holding company for Peoples Federal Savings Bank expects to close on its conversion from mutual ownership today. The public shares should begin trading tomorrow.

Despite the timing, Peoples doesn’t have to worry about investor demand for its shares. Mutual banking companies offer depositors and some others the right to buy shares before the offering, and Peoples received requests for more shares than it plans to sell. The IPO should raise $66 million.

Peoples, which has assets of about $482 million, operates six branches in Boston, Brookline, and Norwood.