Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18550

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Court Upholds Maine Law Restricting Prescription Information
Maine Headline News 2010 Aug 5
http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineHeadlineNews/tabid/968/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3479/ItemId/13112/Default.aspx

Full text:

Three companies challenged Maine’s law, claiming it violated sections of the First Amendment, and other federal statutes.

A federal appeals court has upheld a Maine law that restricts medical data companies from tracking doctors’ prescribing activities. The law had been challenged by three companies that collect and sell information about drug prescriptions for marketing purposes.

The Maine law, which was scheduled to go into effect in 2008, allows doctors to opt out of having their prescribing habits tracked by the companies, who use the information to tailor their drug marketing activities. The law was aimed at reducing health care costs.

The companies challenging the law alleged that it imposed unconstitutional limits on protected speech under the First Amendment, and violated the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce.

But the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, rejecting all the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenges to the law. They also rejected the companies’ claim that the statute is vague. “The Maine statute constitutionally protects Maine prescribers’ choice to opt in to confidentiality protection to avoid being subjected to unwanted solicitations based on their identifying data,” the justices write in their decision.

Meredith Jacob, a pharmaceutical policy fellow at American University’s Washington College of law, applauds the decision. “It reinforces the idea that states can act to protect their patients from invasive, aggressive pharmaceutical marketing, and that that marketing is damaging to patients because it distorts prescribing decisions, and increases the cost of health care,” she says.

The court upheld a similar law in New Hampshire last year.