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Panel buries drug ethics bill

Proposal would have regulated firms' marketing

By Ed Sealover, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 19, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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The most comprehensive pharmaceutical reform bill in America died on a 6-1 vote by a state Senate panel Wednesday.

Sen. Morgan Carroll's Prescription Drug Ethics Act sought to ban drug companies from giving gifts to doctors or reselling patient prescription information for marketing purposes.

It also would have required disclosure of drug companies' advertising and marketing budgets and prohibited persons with financial interests with drug firms from participating in hospitals' or doctors' decisions to buy the drugs.

Carroll and her supporters said at least 1.5 million people a year are harmed nationally by medication errors and contended the bill would have required prescriptions to be more evidence-based.

The Aurora Democrat said Senate Bill 166 was needed to increase patient safety and bring down soaring health care costs.

She said drug makers' inordinate influence on medical professionals is pushing untested products onto the markets and persuading doctors to prescribe high-cost medicines rather than those that patients need.

But drug and bioscience companies argued that the restrictions, which would have been the toughest in the U.S., would have scared business away from Colorado. Other states that ban gifts as small as pens or coffee cups have reported losing convention business, said Dr. Timothy Rodell, president of Globe Immune, a Louisville biotech company.

Companies conducting clinical trials also might fear having to disclose proprietary budgets and decide to conduct them in other states, said Tara Ryan, deputy vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America.

Carroll said threats that the bill would cost jobs were hollow, but members of the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee focused on the financial arguments.

They also complained that the bill tried to do too much.

"The basic idea that marketing and advertising and having a sales force is bad, I can't buy that," said Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder. "What this bill basically does is condemn our way of doing business."

Carroll tried to do a major overhaul of the bill, but Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, committee chair, overruled any attempt at changes on the fly.

Comments

  • February 19, 2009

    5:05 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    angka writes:

    Rollie Heath=Roche. Uncool.

  • February 20, 2009

    10:54 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    law1 writes:

    Carroll is completely out of touch.