Pharma opens its wallet wider for state support, WSJ reports

07/13/2007

A group called the Epilepsy Foundation has been lobbying state legislatures to pass measures that would prevent pharmacists from substituting less expensive generic seizure medication for the brand name version without express approval of the physician, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The group is just one example of a growing group of nonprofit health-care consumer and patient advocate organization that operate largely under the dime and legal counsel of the pharmaceutical industry.  According to the Journal, four pharmaceutical executives and PhRMA CEO Bill Tauzin currently sit on the board of the Epilepsy Foundation.

The arguments of EF advocates turn on the premise that switching to generic medications causes some patients to have seizures.  To date, no studies have been conducted to prove this, and advocates attest on mainly anecdotal evidence.  The FDA has repeatedly told EF that there is not sufficient evidence in the scientific literature to suggest that generics, which are molecularly identical to the brand name drug, cause seizures.

But the dearth of scientific evidence has not affected the progress of state legislation on the issue.  The Journal reports that in both Texas and in Georgia, legislation to restrict generic seizure meds overwhelmingly passed one house in each capitol and stalled in the other. 

According to figures from the Center for Public Integrity, reports that drug makers spent more than $44 million on state lobbying in 2003 and 2004. In addition, the report showed that “campaign contributions to state candidates by pharmaceutical manufacturers and their employees rose to about $8.8 million for 2006 from about $4.6 million for 2000.”
 
As for the Epilepsy Foundation, time is of the essence--the four leading brand name epilepsy drugs took in $5 billion in U.S sales last year; all four are due to go off-patent by 2010.  

For more information, read the full report at WSJ.com (subscription required) or a summary at the WSJ healthblog.