Data mining ban in for tough battle

Bill is last one alive fighting influence of drug companies

By Adam Wilson | The Olympian • Published February 23, 2008

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Proposals aimed at reducing the influence of drug companies on doctors' decisions are not doing well in the Legislature, faltering under lawmakers' doubts and lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry.

Dead bills

•House Bill 2694/Senate Bill 6200: Would have created a state prescription drug professional education program aimed at telling doctors which medications have proved to be effective.

•HB 2680/SB 6302: Would have required drug manufacturers to publicly report every gift, fee or payment made to doctors, health professionals, hospitals or health benefit administrators.

•HB 2664: A match to SB 6241, it would have prohibited the sale or use of a prescriber's individual data for marketing.

Still alive

•SB 6241: Prohibits the sale or use of a prescriber's individual data for marketing or promotional purposes. It is scheduled for a hearing in the House Health Care Committee at 3:30 p.m. Monday in House Hearing Room A in the John O'Brien Building.
About data mining

Information companies buy data from commercial pharmacies. The information does not include the names of patient or doctors. But the companies buy a separate list of doctor identification numbers from the American Medical Association, which allows them to link each prescription with a specific doctor.

• Drug manufacturers buy this new, doctor-specific information. They are able to find doctors who, for example, are prescribing an older, generic drug instead of their latest product for the same illness.

• They contact the doctor, encouraging him or her to consider their product.

One bill still is alive and faces a fight. Five others have failed, including measures requiring drug companies to publicly report the gifts they give doctors. The surviving proposal would keep drug companies from looking up which doctors have not been prescribing their products and sending salespeople to visit them.

Supporters of the bill say such marketing is intrusive and coaxes doctors to give their patients expensive and unnecessary drugs.

"I think most physicians, who are just finding out about this … find it offensive, and find it ethically and morally shady, and it walks a fine line," said Dr. Steven Albrecht of Olympia. "It may be legal, but it probably isn't really the right thing to do. My prescribing information really is the business of me and my patient and the pharmacist filling it." Drug companies spent $7.2 billion on marketing to physicians and hospitals in 2006, and they have lobbied hard in Olympia against the six-bill package aimed at limiting their efforts.

Lawmakers have enough doubts about the remaining bill, Senate Bill 6241, to put its passage in question.

"I don't think it's a substantive health care reform, and as an attorney, I think it's probable that it would be struck down in a federal court. In that sense, it becomes empty political theater," Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, said.

His concerns about the bill are the same points that the drug companies have made: that they have stalled similar laws in three New England states by filing lawsuits, and that doctors already can ask for their information not to be used.

"If you have an opportunity to opt out, why do you need the government to help you?" asked Cliff Webster, a lobbyist who represents Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

About 300 physicians in Washington have requested to be kept out of the marketing lists, according to the American Medical Association. There are 27,000 people licensed to write prescriptions in the state.

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