On the 13th of May, there was a Town Hall meeting at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Public School of Health on prescription drug abuse. President Clinton opened the meeting, and those who provided testimony included Margaret Hamburg of the Food and Drug Administration and the Honorable Patrick Kennedy, former US Representative.
There are a few comments that caught my interest, one being: “Pharma is the largest lobby on Capitol Hill.” The presence of so many pharma lobbyists will certainly tend to support the approval of new drugs like the new formulation of hydrocodone, Zohydro. Hydrocodone is already the most-prescribed medication we have. Another comment made was “Seventy percent of bronchitis patients receive a prescription for antibiotics when they would be appropriate in only 5% of the cases.” This was stated to illustrate the over-prescribing done by many doctors.
Patrick Kennedy, who has himself been addicted to opiates and other substances, made an astute observation when he talked about the fact that insurance coverage does not cover counseling a person to make sure they can manage their prescriptions without becoming addicted. “We wait until it becomes a crisis,” he said. In other words, once a person is addicted, his/her insurance will cover treatment. But not before.
I was somewhat startled to realize that when pharmaceutical companies advertise their drugs directly to consumers, these costs are tax-deductible. I should not have been surprised, because advertising is a cost of doing business. The panelists mentioned eliminating the tax deduction for this advertising. By doing so, pharmaceutical companies would have less incentive for advertising drugs that only doctors should be determining to be right for any particular patient. This would help reduce patient demand for a drug-based solution to a health problem.
The day after this Town Hall meeting, there was a broadcast of testimony before a Senate Caucus on prescription drug abuse. I’m just happy that there are so many high-level conversations on this subject. The more we share our knowledge and our data, the more understanding will be present in those who can change our laws to reduce overprescribing. This is just one small part of dealing with the much larger problem of drug abuse, but every single action like this heads us in the right direction.