The Boston Globe | By Megan Woolhouse | Senate President Therese Murray proposed a total ban on all gifts and freebies to doctors from pharmaceutical companies, a move that would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to ban such gifts outright.
The measure is part of a set of healthcare reform measures Murray filed in a bill yesterday that also includes requiring all doctors statewide to adopt electronic medical records by 2015, allowing patients to choose nurse practitioners as primary care providers, and forcing public reviews of any insurance company efforts to boost annual premiums by more than 7 percent.
"There's going to be a climate change, and there has to be a climate change; otherwise our healthcare reform will implode, just under the costs," Murray said at a press conference at the University of Massachusetts Medical School yesterday.
The ban forbids the pharmaceutical industry from giving - and doctors, their families or employees from receiving - gifts from drug companies. Gifts include payments, entertainment, meals, travel, honorariums, subscriptions, even a pen with a drug company logo.
The legislation would continue to permit distribution of drug samples to doctors for the exclusive use of their patients. Anyone who violates the ban could be fined $5,000, face two years imprisonment, or both, under the proposal.
Other states have passed laws attempting to limit the pharmaceutical industry's influence. In Minnesota, legislators enacted a ban on gifts in excess of $50 from pharmaceutical companies. In Vermont, legislators have passed laws requiring pharmaceutical company representatives to disclose the dollar value of gifts over $25 to doctors. Peggy Kerns, director of the ethics center at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, said Murray's legislation is the first attempt at an outright ban on gifts to doctors that she had heard of.
Kerns said that many states are considering or have passed bans on gifts from lobbyists and industries to elected officials. "I think it's legitimate and I'm sure the legislators are doing it for the public good," she said. "I've just never heard of it, and it seems like the place to start would be within their own ranks."
Massachusetts law already prohibits gifts to legislators and other public officials of "anything of substantial value," or anything worth more than $50.
The ban on drug and device company gifts to physicians was first proposed in 2005 by state Senator Mark C. Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat, who said yesterday by phone that he was "very pleased" to see it included in Murray's proposal. Montigny said he grew concerned about the cost of drugs bought through state-sponsored healthcare programs as chairman of the Senate's Healthcare Committee.
He said he was disturbed to see drug companies hire salespeople including "former beauty queens and cheerleaders" who wine and dine doctors and encourage them to prescribe drugs that may not be the most cost-effective.
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