Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Glaxo bluffs; Our leaders quake?

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Hoo lordy, this is just plain desperate: As part of the health care cost-control plan, Sen. President Murray has proposed to eliminate pharma companies' bribes gifties to doctors. And now  WAAAAATCH OUT! Glaxo's gonna pull up stakes and ship right out!

 It's so obvious: Our health care waste-spending is someone else's revenue stream. But make no mistake — this jacked-up threat is a sign of Glaxo's weakness. The threat is such that it exposes how little a case Glaxo has on the merits. Just a straight-up power play, but it's just got to be a bluff. Glaxo's got all of 115 jobs here; we've got a huge pot-sweetener on the way in the biotech bill (as Glaxo's CEO even acknowledges), and we've got the inherent brainpower advantages that we've always had. Life sciences are cookin'  in MA — who doesn't want some of that action?

Furthermore, their complaints about what the bill does and doesn't do are straight-up FUD — in other words, horsehockey. Docs can still talk to reps. Docs can still even work for pharma co's. They just can't take those nifty gifties. Clear as day.

The response by Patrick and DiMasi's spokespeople has been very very weak tea indeed:

A spokeswoman for DiMasi said the speaker opposes “criminalization” of gift giving, though wouldn’t comment further.

A spokesman for Patrick said Murray’s bill contains “really good ideas” but the governor is still reviewing the gift-ban provision.

Lame. Not exactly Profiles in Courage time — particularly surprising from DiMasi, seeing as he's the man most responsible for Chapter 58, which law's very existence is threatened by rising health care costs.

If you want to contain costs, you gotta piss some people off. Massachusetts' immense strengths in the biotech mean a hell of a lot more than banning their right to (legally) bribe docs.

Call the bluff, everyone. (There are a lot more to come.)

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Comments

  2. Give a doctor a gift, and he’ll prescribe the company’s drug even though he knows it’s the wrong drug.  They just can’t help themselves.  Doctors are so corruptible.

    <

    p>While at it, we should just criminalize all business gifts.  

    <

    p>Those gift giving companies plainly have no place in the Commonwealth.  It’s well known that everyone in this state is completely incapable of making a rational decision if first given a present.  Gifts to lawyers, accountants, gifts by insurance companies, by brokerage firms.

    <

    p>I once knew a diamond broker, who received from a Japanese jewelry business, a 280Z.  Sweet. … I mean, bastards!  Bet the good Senator wishes she could have a cool ride as a gift, and if she can’t, then neither should you.  

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    p>Criminalize those Christmas cards that companies send out each year too. You just know they’re trying to get your business by trying to make you think they give a damn that you have a Merry Christmas.  

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    p>How many times I’ve been begiled into buying insurance after getting one of those cards!  End it, I can help myself.

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    p>I got this neat little multi-tool thing from a client last year around Christmas time.  Just can’t wait ’til the law makes that a crime and we’re safe once more.

    • I worked for assessing.  He was exempt anyway, it turned out, but I’m pretty sure it was illegal for me to take the macaroons, regardless of my actions vis a vis his account.

  3. …with what companies are allowed to give politicians.  If docs are so corruptible over a few branded pens or a “free” lunch, why can politicians take even the reduced amounts they are allowed to be comped?  I trust doctors significantly more than politicians.

    • He has railed against campaign contributions, too.  He’s not singling out doctors.  

      <

      p>

      I’ve raised money for candidates myself, and I’ve given money to candidates. And you know what? I hate it. I feel like I’m suckered into a game that I know is heavily slanted against me, and whose rules have nothing to do with anything I value. In short, it’s a shakedown — I’m paying protection money so that maybe someone will actually pay attention to what I care about.

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      p>I think Charley is right on the merits of the pharma regulation.  

      <

      p>Personally, I just fear that if my doc wife is no longer allowed to occasionally dine at spiffy restaurants on the drug company dime, I won’t be able to get away with taking her out here for our Saturday dates.  

      <

      p>But I’m willing to take the hit for the sake of Charley’s health care affordability vision….

      • It’s high time we looked at the outrageous practice of allowing students to give gifts to teachers.  You know it’s just bribery for a better grade, knowing that teachers too, like doctors, are so corruptible that only a criminal statute can fix the problem.

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        p>”Mr. GGWild, what can I give you to get an A?” blink, blink.

  4. Our health care waste-spending is someone else’s revenue stream.

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    p>This is why the gift ban is important.   If Pharma won’t control its own costs, we–through our legislature–will.

  5. Again———It is apparent no one else works in healthcare. 95% of physicians have the pharm salesman see them on a regular basis. The salesmen are armed with pens, notepads, cheesy stethascopes and LOADS of free samples (meds) you know what the physicians do with the free samples? They give them to their indigent patients! Now that is all coming to an end. WONDERFULL.

    <

    p>It never ceases to amaze me when in the name of GOOD INTENTIONS, we have the legions from Brookline, Newton,and Cambridge turn around and screw things up. But it’s OK because they have GOOD INTENTIONS.

    <

    p>And just as an FYI,, most people are on reams of generics. Folks that get meds like Vasotec, Lipitor, Plavix etc are complicated medical patients and need very precise meds that cost more $$$ because it cost a lot of money for R&D and manufacturing. If you have any idea what it cost to manufacture meds you would be amazed. The clean rooms, positive pressure, contamination control in the parts per billion and general quality control is astronomically expensive. BTW—do to the clamor for low cost meds, Wallmart et all are buying billions of dosage units for low cost. Care to guess where they are being manufactured?
    China and India. Care to hazaed a guess as to what their quality control is like? I went to my pharmacy the day before yesterday and asked where a few of my meds were manufactured. When I found out that they were coming from China and India, I advised the pharmacist that I would no longer take generics and that I’m contacting my MD to have my scripts changed to branded meds and I will pay the difference. Why? Because I don’t want to end up with lead or mercury poisonning or whatever happens to be floating around in the air at the time in Bejing or Calcutta (or whatever they call it now).

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    p>You don’t get someth’n for noth’n in this world.  

    • instead of a prescription? “Sorry you don’t have insurance, but here’s two tabs of Arythromycin…it’s not a full course, but it might kill a couple of bacteria.” A lot of good that will do.  

      • Why would you think that they don’t give out a full course?  Do you just assume that all physicians are frauds, or incompetent?

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        p>My experience with this was that I received a full course of free name-brand antibitics when I was a poor student with a nasty bronchial infection.

        <

        p>Another time, he didn’t have enough, and said, “sorry I don’t have enough to give you any.”  

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        p>Yompin Yiminy, this proposal seems to be designed to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, based on facts from some alternate reality.

        • but you’re disputing the proposal [which cited studies based on more than the story of one person’s two incidences with comped meds], based on the story of one person’s two incidences with comped meds.

          <

          p>Just because things worked out for you doesn’t mean they work out that way for everyone.  Does the problem exist?  Yip, in this reality.  Does that problem outweigh the benefit that people like you received?  Dunno.

      • Lipitor is about a hundred a month. Fosamax I think is $13.00 a tab. MD’s give out these samples to see how Pt’s tolerate them and their efficacy—if everything goes well, it doesn’t cost the Pt a dime.

        <

        p>The pharmaceutical companies used their trinkets as good will to get to see the docs. The only concern to an MD is that the drug is efficacious and the cost/risk.benefit to that individual patinet is within normal limits.

        <

        p>Personally, I don’t care what it costs—I want the best med for whatever ails me—not some generic that has been around ten years. I have a brother/law that takes >$600.00 a month in cardiac meds to stay alive. If he had taken the older generics he would have been dead three years ago. He still is gainfully employed, works forty hours a week and doesn’t take a dime from SSI.

    • LOADS of free samples (meds) you know what the physicians do with the free samples? They give them to their indigent patients!

      <

      p>Yeah — they give them free samples of the expensive non-generic version, but not enough for a full dosage [ie not the entire length of time necessary].  So, the patient takes 7 days worth, and then has to get a script filled for the remaining days necessary.  End result: patient pays more out of pocket and insurance company pays more out of pocket.  Who wins?  Why, the company giving out free meds.  First hit is free, then you’ve got to pay the drug dealer.

      <

      p>

      Care to guess where they are being manufactured?
      China and India.

      <

      p>Care to guess why this isn’t a legitimate problem?  The FDA.  This is one of the [legit] reasons why importing from Canada is a no-go… because the FDA hasn’t verified the supply chain if the drug has been imported through Canada, that’s the “Canadian FDA”‘s job.  Kneejerking that all meds from India or China are more dangerous is foolish given that we have government oversight.  If you don’t trust the oversight, why would it matter if the drug was from China or Germany?

      <

      p>My question to MCRD is: what are Chinese and Indian medicine manufacturer’s quality controls like?  Got any first person reports?  Any articles, refereed or not?  I lived in China last summer and worked for a Chinese pharmaceutical wholesaler, doing inventory management.  My sense for their quality control is… they’re as capable of doing an adequate job as is Europe and America.  Do they?  I have no idea.  I do know that the FDA inspects factories overseas [though not 100% of them], and that given the US media’s obsession with pointing out every manufacturing problem from China, if there’s no FauxNews story about tainted meds from China, it’s almost certainly because the FDA hasn’t found any yet.

      • Lead in toys, Salmonella in beef, mercury in parmaceuticals, atomic triggers sent to whomever in the middle east, mercury in Chinese shrimp amongst other things,cracking spars on F-15’s, poisonned dog food, and you think uncle sam is right on top of it.

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        p>I trust German, Swedish, and American pharmaceuticals and even then it pasy to be cautious. China and India—-I wouldn’t go near anything they manufacture for internal or external use.

        <

        p>You had better do some extensive reading on generics and their efficacy viz a vis the most recent drugs available on or off label.  

        • Lead in toys?  Not the FDA
          Salmonella in beef?  Not from overseas
          Mercury in pharmaceuticals?  Not related to China at all
          Atomic triggers sent to whomever in the Middle East?  Not medicine
          Mercury in Chinese shrimp?  Not medicine
          Cracking spars on F-15s?  Not medicine
          Poisoned dog food?  Not medicine

          <

          p>Do I think that Uncle Sam is on top of everything?  Nope.  Do I think Uncle Sam is doing as well a job on Chinese and Indian drugs as they are on other drugs?  Yip.  My expectation is that the probability of a drug being tainted and making it past the FDA is strictly proportional to the amount of drugs that country makes — that is, that Chinese drugs are no more likely “per capita” than other drugs to be tainted.

          <

          p>So far as I can tell, you have absolutely no evidence to the contrary.

          <

          p>

          <

          p>P.S. Easy on the language please.

    • The bill exempts drug samples from the ban.  

      <

      p>Bill writers are trying to only throw out the bath water.  Phrma keeps raising these red herring issues even after they’ve been addressed in order to kill the bill as a whole.  

    • and I didn’t see a single case of a Chinese drug imported into the USA that contained a problem.

      <

      p>Did I miss it, or are you entirely avoiding the point that we’re talking about Chinese made drugs legally imported into the US?

      • Since you seem to endlessly expound on this subject and are aware of what goes on in healthcare, I am assuming you are a physician, PA, RNP, or RN. With your wealth of knowledge I will assume you are a physiciam with fifteen years experience. I’ll call you STOMV MD henceforth.

        <

        p>Which language would you prefer? Francais, Espaneol, Deutcher, Italiano?  

  7. http://www.pharmaceutical-busi…

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    p>http://www.zangani.com/node/1500

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    p>When Hubbard was at the FDA, he heard all kinds of stories about foreign food processors, like the one a staffer told him after visiting a Chinese factory that makes herbal tea.

    <

    p>”To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out,” Hubbard says. “And the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves.”

    <

    p>That lead-contaminated herbal tea would only be caught by FDA inspectors at the border if they knew to look for it, Hubbard says.

    <

    p>”The system is so understaffed now that what is being caught and stopped is only a fraction of the food that’s actually slipping through the net,” he says.

    <

    p>The FDA normally inspects about 1 percent of all food and food ingredients at U.S. borders. It does tests on about half of 1 percent.

    <

    p>And official vigilance has been going down – for two reasons.

    <

    p>First, food imports have increased dramatically, from $45 billion in 2003 to $64 billion three years later.

    <

    p>Second, the “food” part of the FDA has been getting smaller.

    <

    p>Shaun Kennedy of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense says no country is increasing its food exports faster than China.

    <

    p>”China has increased overall its food imports to the United States by over 20 percent in the last year alone,” Kennedy says. “Going back three years, we have doubled our agricultural inputs from China.”

    <

    p>China has become the leading supplier of many food ingredients, such as apple juice, a primary sweetener in many foods; garlic and garlic powder, a major flavor agent; sausage casings and cocoa butter.

    <

    p>China now supplies 80 percent of the world’s ascorbic acid – vitamin C. It’s used as a preservative and nutritional enriching agent in thousands of foods. One-third of the world’s vitamin A now comes from China, along with much of the supply of vitamin B-12 and many health-food supplements, such as the amino acid lysine.

    <

    p>That is no accident. Chinese manufacturers have tried to corner the market in many food ingredients by under-pricing other suppliers.

    <

    p>Leo Hepner, a food-ingredient consultant based in London, says vitamin C is a good example.

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    p>”The price in 1995 was $15 per kilogram,” Hepner says. “Today, the price from China is $3.50.”

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    p>No one can compete with that. So most Western producers of vitamin C have shut down.

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    p>That’s globalization. But there’s a hidden price for cheap goods. Earlier this year, lead-contaminated multivitamins showed up on the shelves of U.S. retailers. And this spring, vitamin A from China contaminated with dangerous bacteria nearly ended up in European baby food.

    <

    p>It’s bound to happen more often. Hubbard says the agency is overwhelmed by the rising tide of imports.

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    p>”When I came to the FDA in the 1970s, the food program was almost half of the FDA’s budget. Today, it’s only a quarter,” Hubbard says.

    <

    p>Experts say the FDA has about 650 food inspectors to cover 60,000 domestic food producers and 418 ports of entry.

    <

    p>The agency plans to close nearly half of its 13 food-testing labs.

    <

    p>All that means food safety depends on the vigilance of food companies operating in a fast-changing world. Many companies may not know much about their suppliers.

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    p>Earlier this month, the FDA wrote a letter to food manufacturers reminding them of their legal responsibility to make sure all the ingredients they use are safe. Don’t depend on FDA testing, the letter says.

    <

    p>  

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