Rx Marketing May Need Attention Before Medicare Benefit - Rep. Shadegg

House Energy & Commerce Committee member Shadegg (R-Ariz.) is seeking input on whether Congress should investigate pharmaceutical company marketing practices before enacting a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Shadegg told the seven witnesses who testified during the Health Subcommittee hearing on Medicare Feb. 15 that he will ask them to submit written comments on the impact of marketing practices on drug costs.

Shadegg, chairman of the Republican Study Committee (formally the Conservative Action Team), prefaced his questions by recounting his impression of some of the marketing practices used by pharmaceutical companies in his home district.

"I can tell you about the dinners that doctors are taken to, the gifts that they're given, the golf outings," Shadegg said. "I've been told by doctors in Phoenix, Arizona, that they'll be taken out for a night of entertainment by a drug firm, and they will be taken first, to a cigar shop, where they can walk in and pick out anything they want in the entire cigar shop."

"They will be taken to a florist, where they can pick out any flowers they want for their spouses, no holds barred," he continued. "Then they're taken to a restaurant - the highest-end restaurant - and fed a lavish dinner."

"I'm not an advocate of government regulation or government price controls," Shadegg observed, "but I'm concerned."

Shadegg also questioned the effects of direct-to-consumer advertising on prescription drug demand. Finally, he asked, "have you or your organization studied or analyzed the effects, or the phenomenon, of these very high U.S. drug prices versus low foreign prices?"

The disparity in domestic and foreign drug prices received bipartisan attention during the hearing. Rep. Barrett (D-Wisc.) raised the issue in his opening statement: "I think we have to deal with the market distortions because I believe...we are, in effect, subsidizing seniors throughout the world."

Health Subcommittee Chairman Bilirakis (R-Fla.) closed the hearing by supporting the Wisconsin Democrat's comments. Barrett "said something about Americans subsidizing the cost of drugs," Bilirakis noted. "When you stop to think about it, he said it well."