Healthy Skepticism Library item: 309

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

Norman J.
Drug firm lobbyists intruded, Grassley says: 'Industry plants' attended several town meetings on a Medicare law in Iowa last week, the senator says.
Register Washington Bureau 2004 Apr 22

Full text:

Washington, D.C. – Drug company employees lobbied against importation of prescription drugs at town meetings in Iowa intended to provide seniors with information on the new Medicare drug law, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa said Wednesday.

“We had drug company representatives show up and try to denigrate my efforts for the importation of drugs,” said Grassley, a Republican who has introduced legislation that would allow U.S. consumers to buy lower-priced pharmaceuticals from Canada.

“They tried to take over the meeting,” he said, and did not initially identify themselves as representing drug companies. Grassley said the “industry plants” were at four of 12 meetings he held last week, in groups as large as six.

Ann Black, a representative in Iowa for the seniors advocacy group AARP, said she witnessed one exchange at a meeting in Winterset.

“It carried on for some time, to the point of bothering the seniors who were there for other reasons,” she said.

Prescription drug makers oppose reimportation, arguing that it would open U.S. borders to unsafe counterfeit drugs.

Alan Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, issued a news release opposing the Grassley bill when it was introduced, citing the “significant safety risk” the industry believes it poses.

Grassley has in the past found more support from drugmakers, taking in more than $234,000 in campaign contributions from the industry from 1999 through 2003, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

He would not identify the companies whose employees questioned him at the meetings. No more town hall meetings on Medicare are scheduled.

Officials with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America did not respond to a request for comment.