The legislature enacted and sent to the Governor last night
a Health Care Cost Control Bill that will begin to reign in aggressive and
inappropriate marketing tactics by drug companies and medical device companies. Those excessive marketing tactics have
resulted in excessive prescription drug costs and compromised care. Direct-to-physician industry marketing
promotes the prescribing of expensive drugs in place of equally safe and
effective lower-cost drugs and the prescribing of newer brand name drugs that
have the least safety and efficacy information. The excessive marketing of
Vioxx, for example, led to the prescribing of a new drug that ended up causing
unforeseen heart problems that killed 40,000 people.
“While the bill does not include a complete ban on industry
gifts to prescribers it does make a giant step forward in shining the light on this
marketing practice through the disclosure of anything of more than $50 value,
giving the DPH authority to ban some gifts, and including significant fines for
violations of the new regulations,” said Deirdre Cummings, Legislative Director
of MASSPIRG.
The final bill also included the following cost control
reforms:
RX Drug Marketing
Regulations: Requires pharmaceutical and
medical device companies to disclose payments to health care providers of $50
or above to DPH which will make the disclosures publicly available. Directs DPH
to establish regulations on pharmaceutical and medical device marketing, using
the industry’s own Code as a minimum
standard, and establishes a $5000 penalty for violation, enforceable by the
Attorney General.
Creation of an
Academic Detailing Program: A much needed counterweight to the
industry’s commercial detailing and gift-giving marketing efforts. Academic detailing programs are
cost-effective ways to improve physician prescribing behavior and so reduce
health care costs: Based on other states’
experiences with academic detailing programs, Massachusetts can expect to
save two to three dollars for every dollar we spend on academic detailing.
Use of Uniform Claim
Codes: Currently, nearly one-third
of all dollars spent on health care go toward administrative costs – and much
of that is wasted on managing the tangle of bureaucratic claim codes created by
different insurance plans. Conservative
estimates project that the adoption of uniform claim codes will save Massachusetts hospitals
over $50 million annually in administrative costs.
Public Reporting of
Healthcare-Associated Infections and Serious Reportable Events: Requires facility-specific public reporting
of infections, as already required in twenty-two other states and the reporting
of, and allows for the nonpayment for, serious reportable events.
Taken together, these provisions will begin to contain the
cost of health care in the commonwealth helping Massachusetts citizens continue to have
access to affordable health care.
