ASK YOUR doctor if Prilosec is right for you, what Claritin can do for you. Ask your doctor how Viagra can change your life or if Paxil can help. And while you're at it, ask your doctor a question you won't see advertised during this weekend's football broadcasts: Ask your doctor if all this prescription drug advertising is good for our health care system.
We've become so accustomed to television and print ads encouraging us to "ask our doctor about 'X' drug" that such a statement no longer seems absurd. But a moment's analysis reveals it for exactly that: the absurdity of assuming that a 30-second advertising spot of a woman playing with a puppy or a couple walking along a moonlit beach makes a viewer a greater expert on the best treatment for a certain condition than his or her doctor's seven years of medical training. As former Clinton advisor James Carville puts it, "The minute you're telling your doctor what you want prescribed, doesn't that make him or her not a doctor but actually a drug dealer?"
All these ads promising to cure your symptoms are actually a symptom themselves of a very broken prescription drug system. For years, prescription drug companies have been exploiting loopholes in patent legislation to keep their generic competitors off the market, thus stifling research and forcing huge price hikes. Admittedly, the costs of discovering treatments and cures for disease can be enormous, and the individuals who develop such drugs, as well as the companies that sponsor and market them, are more than entitled to not only make back the money they invest in a drug, but a significant profit as well. But to suffocate competition through exploitation of the patent system after such a point means huge costs, both financial and medically, to the consumer.
The Senate recognized the danger of this abuse when it voted, by a 78-21 margin, to pass the Greater Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals Act (S.812) back in July 2002. Essentially, the bipartisan act would have closed loopholes in previous legislation (1984's Hatch-Waxman Act) that allowed brand-name drug companies to play the legal system in such a way as to prevent cheaper generic drugs from entering the market. For example, according to Public Citizen's Congress Watch, "Under current law, brand-name drug companies can receive multiple automatic 30-month stays of generic competition. All that is required to receive a 30-month stay of competition is for the brand-name company to list a patent with the FDA and claim that its patent would be infringed if a generic company marketed its product. The GAAPAct would limit drug companies to one 30-month stay of generic competition."
Furthermore, the GAAP Act would have allowed generic manufacturers to challenge frivolous brand patents before the FDA, as well as permitted generic companies to enter the market even if another generic maker has entered into agreement with a brand-name company not to do so.
All in all, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that "S.812 would have saved consumers and government programs $60 billion over the next 10 years," a massive savings to the 65 million Americans that have no insurance coverage to help with the high price of prescription drugs. All that, and the bill would have help fostered the all-American value of competition in the market.
It was a bill that represented common sense legislation with real benefits for millions of Americans. And a bill that was defeated in the House of Representatives on Oct. 9, 2002.
What could explain the defeat of such a beneficial and necessary bill? Follow the money trail.
The pharmaceutical industry's campaign contributions spiked in 2002 as "Big Pharma" gave a record $17 million to members of the controlling Republican Party. Compare that to a paltry $4 million in campaign contributions to the minority Democrats, or, even better, the total (to both parties) $6 million in contributions this election cycle, where no such legislation is pending. And who exactly is getting this money? In House races, it was members like Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., who received contributions totaling $126,199, and who serves as chairwoman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee. That total, incidentally, is more than double the contributions made to Johnson's 2000 campaign, before she was named to the post in January 2001. Mike Ferguson, R-N.J., received $106,718 and serves with Johnson on the Health Subcommittee. The rest of the recipients of the pharmaceutical companies' generosity in 2002 reads like a "Who's Who" of the subcommittee. And the only Democrat to make the top 10? That would be John Dingell, D-Mich., who received $104,000, and who also serves as the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.
Take a moment to connect the dots and it becomes increasingly clear that the industry is not giving simply to support the election of the candidates of their choice, but to affect policy. The defeat of GAAP Act in the House was a return on their investment, but it was also a blow to millions of Americans struggling to afford the skyrocketing costs of their prescriptions.
So ask your doctor what the makers of Prilosec, Claritin, Viagra and Paxil are doing to the state of health care in America and to your financial bottom line. Or, better yet, ask your congressmen what "Big Pharma's" doing for theirs.
Katie Cristol's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kcristol@cavalierdaily.com.
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