PROFESSIONMore states considering gift-disclosure legislationMany of the proposals would put the names of physicians accepting a drugmaker's gift worth $25 or more on a state list open to the public.By Kevin B. O'Reilly, amednews staff. March 20, 2006. Eager to attack high prescription drug prices and concerned about physicians' conflicts of interest, politicians in nine states have proposed legislation to require that drugmakers publicly disclose gifts of substantial value made to doctors, pharmacists, hospitals and other prescribers. A bill in Massachusetts would ban all gifts to physicians. "There's a very clear relationship when you have practices that tend to influence prescribers and shift prescribing patterns to newer drugs which can be many, many times more expensive," said Sharon Treat, executive director of the National Legislative Assn. on Prescription Drug Prices, a state legislator-run nonprofit group that focuses on ways to lower drug prices at the state level. In total, 15 gift-disclosure bills have been filed in Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. Many of the bills were carried over from the 2005 legislative calendar and are still in committee. A bill passed by the New Hampshire Senate has been referred for further study by its House of Representatives. Most of the proposals are patterned after a model crafted by the Center for Policy Alternatives, a liberal advocacy group that advises state legislators, and would force drugmakers to report all gifts valued at $25 or more to the state's health department, which would issue an annual public report listing individual physicians and the dollar value of the gifts they received that year. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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