Health care reform advancing on multiple fronts
Today Barack Obama announced his new Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. With his cabinet appointee at his side, the president-elect promised health insurance reform within his first year in office. It’s a promise that, if kept, would create substantial changes in the health care sector.
But the efforts to implement universal health insurance aren’t the only reforms health-related industries may face when a new government comes into power in January. Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California and the soon-to-be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has indicated his intention to tackle the issue of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising — that is, the barrage of TV ads peddling Viagra or trying to convince you that you have restless legs syndrome — once he takes the gavel.
In a move to preempt Congressional action, the pharmaceutical lobbying group PhRMA has issued its own new “rules” for prescription drug advertising. They include guidelines for using celebrity endorsers and actors posing as doctors, as well as suggestions for providing phone numbers for reporting bad reactions to their drugs. The terms “guidelines” and “suggestions” are apt, however: PhRMA has absolutely no power to enforce the rules and little interest in policing its members. The group’s sole means of punishment consists in the publishing of a periodic report of violators.
Not surprisingly, Waxman’s plans for regulating drug ads go a bit farther. Among other things, the congressman would like to impose two-year bans on commercial advertising for some new drugs, arguing that the early years are when most advertising takes place, thus “increas[ing] the number of consumers exposed to safety risks of new products long before those risks are truly understood.” That’s a far cry from PhRMA’s polite request that companies tell you when an actor isn’t really a doctor but just plays one on TV. And something tells me Waxman would like something stronger than a “shame-on-you” report as a means of bending drug companies to his will.










