[T]he Vermont Senate gave preliminary approval Friday to a bill that would allow doctors and other health care providers to eat food paid for by pharmaceutical companies.
The Senate approved S.45 in a voice vote, with a handful of voices dissenting. The bill is scheduled to be read the third time, and possibly passed, on Tuesday. The bill would then head to the House.
If S.45 is approved by the Legislature, Vermont would adopt federal rules to allow doctors to eat food provided at conferences, but require pharmaceutical companies to report more free food as gifts, according to Sen. Debbie Ingram, D-Chittenden.
Currently, lawmakers say state statute prohibiting certain gifts from pharmaceutical companies to doctors and other health care providers means that those providers cannot accept free food from pharmaceutical companies at conferences.
“Our highly restrictive laws, which are more stringent even than federal law, are inhibiting our physicians’ abilities to participating fully in continuing ed conferences,” Ingram said.
She said pharmaceutical companies sometimes embarrass Vermont physicians who go to their conferences by placing a sign in front of conference buffets saying Vermont practitioners are not allowed to eat the food.
Ingram read a letter on the Senate floor from a doctor in Burlington who said he attended a conference but had to take a taxi to a nearby restaurant to find food. The doctor, who was unnamed, said he missed presentations. The Vermont Medical Society asked Ingram not to disclose the doctor’s identity.
Jessa Barnard, a lobbyist for the Vermont Medical Society, said in an interview that S.45 was one of the organization’s legislative priorities this year.
“This is solving a fairly narrow problem of being able to accept food at a conference when the content that accompanies that food is either accredited (continuing medical education) or otherwise objective and free from influence,” Barnard said.
She described what happens at many national conferences: “There may be a lunch or some coffee in back of the room, but if that’s provided by a drug manufacturer, rather than the conference itself, they’re not able to accept that food.”
“Sometimes they’re not able to enter the room because that’s easier for the conference sponsor to just say, ‘You can’t even be in the same location so we don’t have to track if you’ve accepted the food,’” Barnard said.
She said the current law is “an impediment to obtaining continuing education.”
