Video News - Ban all Pharma Gifts to Doctors - Massachusetts Legislative Bill

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Massachusetts legislators

are pushing a bill to ban all Pharma gifts to Doctors. "Vermont and Minnesota are two other states

that have taken steps in this direction."

 

Eli Lilly CEO

worries about this.

Video here: http://tinyurl.com/5pgb4j

NECN (New England Cable News)

Eli Lilly CEO on

pharmaceuticals and doctors’ gifts

Boston, Mass

May 1, 2008

Peter Howe

The CEO of Eli Lilly was in Boston Wednesday for

a medical industry conference. John Lechleiter weighed in on some

legislation pending on Beacon Hill that could have a major impact on

the pharmaceutical industry.

 

As CEO of Eli Lilly, John Lechleiter oversees a business with 40,000

employees and revenues of nearly $19 billion. But the Massachusetts

State Senate got his attention last month, passing what would be the

nation's most draconian ban on drug company gifts to doctors.

Nationally, there's growing attention on meals, sports tickets, trips

and trinkets doctors get from drug companies. Whether freebies such as

these influence what drugs they prescribe patients. The Senate bill

would make Massachusetts the first state to ban all pharmaceutical

company gifts - completely.

 

 

Massachusetts already leads the country, Lechleiter says, in

prescribing cheap generic drugs for Medicaid users. So he questions

whether doctors here really are being wooed by pharma reps to push

expensive name brands. The bigger issue, he contends, is doctors being

cut off from solid information that happens to come from a drug rep.

 

“Imagine how detrimental that could be to the health of patients. Would

any one of us want to be a patient or have our mother or daughter be a

patient and not be knowledgeable about the latest breakthroughs in

medicine? That's the kind of information our sales people discuss with

physicians so that patients at the end of the day can benefit.”

 

"Even pens and pads of paper would be forbidden gifts from

pharmaceutical companies to doctors.”

 

With good reason, says a top Senator. He cites major medical journal

studies.

 

Richard Moore: “Gifts, even as simple as a pen or a pad with the name

of a particular drug on it, expensive dinners or trips or paying

someone to have their name on an article, really undercut the integrity

of the medical profession.”

UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester has

sharply restricted what their doctors can take from drug companies, and

other hospitals are weighing bans. But Lechleiter says one overlooked

group that could be hurt are financially struggling medical practices

in low-income areas that make good use of free products from big pharma.

 

“What you might find, may be some brochures in Spanish if it's a

Hispanic population aimed at helping people understand what is diabetes

and who is susceptible to diabetes.

 

These are the sorts of things that unfortunately, in the current

legislation, could be blocked or cut off.”

 

The ban on drug company gifts to physicians is just one piece of a

complex piece of legislation Senate President Therese Murray got

through the Senate.

 

 

26,574 Signatures Against

TeenScreen. http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html Video:

 

 

 

 

 

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