(Host) Legislative leaders want to strictly limit pharmaceutical industry gifts to physicians.
The legislation has the support of the state’s medical society.
The group says the public needs confidence that doctors are not improperly influenced by drug company payments.
VPR’s John Dillon reports:
(Dillon) Vermont already has a law on the books that requires drug companies to disclose in detail how much they spend to market their products to health care providers.
Last year, for example, the drug company payments totaled about $3 million dollars, up 33% from the year before.
But the disclosure law doesn’t disclose everything. The names of individual physicians who received the gifts are often not made public.
The legislation sponsored by Senate President Peter Shumlin and 28 other senators would change that. Peter Shumlin:
(Shumlin) "What this bill will do is make Vermont the first state in the country that’s transparent, that allows consumers to know
whether or not their doctor is taking payments from the pharmaceutical industry."
(Dillon) The Vermont Medical Society supports the bill. Doctor John Brumsted is the society’s president. He says physicians want their patients to know that decisions about which drug to use are based on best medical practice, not gifts from the industry.
(Brumsted) "Our 1,500 hundred plus physician members have been very clear on this issue. We’ve gone to them directly and gotten survey data. They are not comfortable with even the slightest appearance of conflict of interest."
(Dillon) The bill bans outright many gifts to physicians and health care providers. But it still permits the industry to pay doctors a fee for giving a lecture at a scientific conference.
Rutland Senator Kevin Mullin says the legislation tries to limits these kinds of payments.
(Mullin) "You couldn’t go to an educational conference and receive an honorarium fee for attending that if you were there to promote a particular drug. But if you were there to promote education among your colleagues, then it would be allowed, it would just have to be disclosed."
(Dillon) The legislation allows physicians to be paid for clinical research underwritten by drug companies. But a lawyer for the industry says the bill requires these payments to be reported as gifts.
Marjorie Powell is senior assistant general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. She says the payments for research should not be considered as a gift.
(Powell) "Because it will be reported as a gift, I’m concerned that some physicians won’t want to participate in clinical trials."
(Dillon) Powell said there are about a thousand patients in Vermont enrolled in clinical trials to test new drug treatments. She says it’s bad public policy to discourage this kind of research.
For VPR News, I’m John Dillon in Montpelier.