Prescriber data used wisely is an excellent tool to do just that. Those who wish to restrict data access really want to drive down the cost of marketing pharmaceuticals. So do I. However, the way to do that is not to make prescriber behavior less transparent. Used wisely, such data makes marketintg more efficient and effective for both marketers and prescribers.

The real flaw in the argument against evidence-based marketing with prescriber data is that it is responsible for increasing the cost of prescription drugs. There are many reasons for the increase, but prescriber data access is not among them. Demand is a primary driver of cost. Demographics, new product development, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing are factors that have driven demand. But making prescriber data less available will increase, not decrease, costs, and that those costs will indeed be passed on to payers. I would think critics would be the first to acknowledge that companies will pass on increased costs.

As to costs, sample distribution is hardly a function of prescriber profile data. Samples abounded before such data was available. Samples costs are inflated anyway as they are measured at price not cost. Ironically, oversampling actually costs companies money as often the entire therapeutic dose is provided via samples to those who could werll afford to pay (case in point: me–this recently occurred with not one, but two Rxs on a personal visit to my own physician). Downsizing the salesforce will perhaps reduce such unintended consequences. However samples are a principal tool physicians use to treat the underinsured and uninsured–be careful what you wish for, oh advocates of the underpriveleged.

Brand name drugs are not priced higher than generics because of marketing costs. Rational profit maximizers wish marketing costs were zero. Companies price to optimize profit because they are for-profit entities, most publicly traded, with fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders. Companies market to maximize profit, as they price. But if drugs sold themselves there would be no sales forces and no samples.

You can debate whether it is unethical to profit from healthcare. But that is our system. Hospitals, doctors, medical device companies, all players in the healthcare market all make a profit, and they all market-because they have to. Great gains in quality of life and longevity have been attained through our system. Does anyone seriously believe that the innovation of the modern era would have occurred if profit from healthcare was illegal? Would government or academia achieve more? Perhaps the Hugo Chavez’s and Fidel Castros of the world would say si, but I and most Americans say no.

I do indeed call laws such as Maine and Vermont’s prescriber privacy acts “a waste of taxpayer dollars”, mainly becuase the authors know they are unconstitutional and pursue them for to pander for votes in my opinion more than to change the world. They will raise, not lower, health care costs. If anything, more physicians will receive more marketing information because companies will not be able to target physicians who might benefit from such information and will have to send it to every physician in the target specialty (see what I mean about unintended comsequences). Doctors have an excellent tool to insulate themselves from pharmaeutical representatives–it’s called the word no. Many physicians choose, for better or worse, not to see pharmaceutical representatives. Why is that freedom to choose not sufficient for those who seek to waste taxpayer dollars in a quixotic attempt to violate the First Amendment?

I have called those who say that prescriber profiling reveals patient specific data liars. They are. It doesn’t.

While I’m glad you enjoyed our Web site (and no that is not Doctor House, it is a generic doctor-you should be pleased), I beg to differ with your characterization. We facilitate communication from marketers to physicians. Some of these marketers are pharmaceutical, others are academic medical centers purveying continuing medical education opportunities (which I gather you support), job opportunities in underserved areas, and other offers you might find more socially beneficial. All of these marketers have a right to communicate with physicians. We merely facilitate that communication in an efficient manner, enabling communications germane to the recipient. Properly used, our services spare physicians and other health professionals irrelevant communications and reduce marketing costs. We believe those are good things, and we have since our founding in 1929. Marketing will be done, whether you like it or not–we seek to do it better for all parties involved.

Enemies of the pharmaceutical industry certainly can be fairly categorized as proponents of generics. The problem is that in a generic world there is no incentive other than altruism to launch new drugs. Call me a cynical capitalist, but I would rather depend onm the profit motive for pharmaceutical progress than the better angels of human nature. It costs over a billion dollars to develop a new drug. There is multi-billion dollar liability associated with product launches that go awry. This is a big league game requiring big league bats and balls–serious capital that by its very nature demands serious returns. As a patient, I hope enemies of the industry fail, because I yearn for new drugs that will conquer the remnant diseases that afflict us. Thus I think the Marie Antoinette analogy is more than apt. However, perhaps a better metaphor is the grey world of communism, in which evil capitalists were banished along with any whiff of innovation, where workers pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them, where everything was free but nothing was available, and where healthcare utilized drugs and devices as old as Marx. Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Fortunately, I believe most of us have learned our lesson.