Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states can’t pass laws like one in Vermont that prevent drug companies from gaining access to the prescribing records of physicians. Pharmaceutical firms use these records to determine which doctors should be bombarded with detailers and marketing messages to beef up sales of broadly prescribed drugs like anti-depressants, anti-pain pills, cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-control meds.
The high court said limiting access to these records would be an unwarranted restriction on free speech. Hogwash. The routine release and sale of these records by pharmacies and marketing firms is an unwarranted intrusion into the patient-physician relationship and an attack on patient privacy.
Here’s a hypothetical. My primary care physician belongs to a five-member practice, whose pharmacy records indicate all five are heavy prescribers of SSRIs, a class of drug commonly prescribed for mild depression and anxiety. If companies can get those records, can’t my self-insured employer? And if my employer sees those records, what will they think of me?
States like that have restricted access to these records did the right thing. Such laws protect patient privacy, and have the side benefit of restricting unwarranted and unnecessary drug industry marketing. If the pro-business Roberts court in is mindless pursuit of boosting business can’t see its way clear to seeing those issues, the medical profession must step in and declare it unethical to allow drug industry marketers into their offices and clinics.
Alas, the American Medical Association prefers a voluntary approach. In a press release offered Thursday, the nation’s largest and most influential physician group touted its Physician Data Restriction Program (PDRP), which allows individual physicians to "opt out" of data releases. "We believe the PDRP balances individual physician concerns regarding prescription data with First Amendment freedoms and the fundamental public interest in robust medical research," the AMA press release said. Since 2006, just 28,000 have made use of this "voluntary" program. Stronger medicine is needed.
Merrill Goozner is an award-winning journalist and author of “The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs” who writes regularly at Gooznews.com.
