New Hampshire Prescription Information Law Upheld

New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation law that aims to keep the prescription writing history of doctors from drug companies was upheld by a federal appeals court yesterday. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston overturned a previous decision by a lower court that the law would infringe on free speech.

 

 

Patient names were never included in the data.

The proponents of the bill argued that these research companies sold the information to pharmaceutical companies who in turn used the information to target doctors with custom marketing plans based on their prescription writing habits. Proponents argue that the law would help control health care costs, protect patient-doctor relationships, and that it would reduce incentives to doctors for prescribing more expensive and unnecessary brand name drugs.

Opponents of the bill argued that the bill would slow the speed of adoption of new therapies, reduce the chance for small biotech firms to enter the market, that it’d increase the cost of marketing which would result in higher drug costs, and that it’d waste physician time because pharmaceutical reps and doctors would increasingly be mismatched. They argued that the law would infringe on free speech (the lower court agreed to this before it was overruled) and that it would overreach in scope, violating interstate commerce laws. Opponents also pointed out that researchers, law enforcement and government agencies also used the information.

Currently, New Hampshire is the only state with such a law.