Massachusetts House Waters Down Bill on Pharma Conduct

As many a blog is reporting this morning (eg, WSJ Health Blog), the Massachusetts House will vote today on a proposed pharma-code bill for the state. The vote follows yesterday's honing of the proposed legislation, which led to the removal of 1) a ban on gifts and meals to physicians; 2) the reporting of physician payments for consulting and speaking, and 3) a $5000 fine per violation. The Massachusetts Senate had unanimously passed a previous version of the bill that had included the removed items.

According to the Boston Globe, the bill will require that pharma adopt a marketing code of conduct, like the one PhRMA unveiled last week, which eliminates drug-branded tchotchkes, other noneducational gifts, and anything more than pizza or sandwiches during working hours.

Unlike the PhRMA code, however, the Massachusetts bill bans pharma's purchase and use of drug-prescribing information. New Hampshire's attempt to limit the use of these data by drug companies was judged last year to be an unconstitutional violation of commercial free speech. The AMA currently offers an opt-out program to physicians, which contractually obligates pharma from sharing their prescribing information with reps.

July 17 update: The Massachusetts House unanimously approved the watered-down bill, according to today's Boston Globe. But the House voted to delay the effective date of the part of the bill that bars the purchase by pharma of prescription info (to November 2009), while New Hampshire wrestles with the issue of commercial free speech. The differences between the bill passed in the Senate and the bill passed in the House will probably be reconciled before the end of the month, the paper writes.