Windham: Massachusetts should get on board with doctor dispensing

In 45 states and Washington, D.C., patients can purchase medicine directly from their prescribing doctor. That’s a good thing: Besides saving a trip to the drug store, patients who choose this option are more likely to take their medicine, and doctors who dispense prescription drugs can do so at much lower prices than pharmacies.

Yet Massachusetts and four other holdouts still cling to the pharmacy-centric model, under which doctors prescribe medicine but cannot hand it to patients on their way out the door.

Pharmacists sometimes defend this system by citing a need for extra oversight. Yet national research shows that doctors are just as safe as pharmacists when dispensing. A recent development in Montana offers a clue about the real reason for the restriction.

Since the early 1970s, Montana has been one of the few states to ban doctor dispensing. But last year, three family doctors were fed up with how the law prevented them from helping their patients. So the doctors teamed up with the Institute for Justice and sued to have the ban declared unconstitutional.

The COVID-19 pandemic added urgency. Before the case reached trial, concerned lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow doctors to dispense most types of prescription medicine as long as they followed the same labeling, storage and recordkeeping requirements as pharmacists. The measure received near-unanimous support, including from a surprising group: the Montana Pharmacy Association.

For decades, the pharmacy lobby has defended the few remaining bans on doctor dispensing. But this time, the state pharmacy association changed its tune. To its credit, the group submitted testimony to the Montana Legislature admitting what most observers correctly presumed:  “(A)t the root of our previous opposition to similar bills was protectionism.”

Essentially, the group said the quiet part out loud: Banning doctor dispensing has nothing to do with protecting patients, and everything to do with protecting pharmacists from competition. But picking winners and losers is not the government’s job.

After the bombshell revelation, the bill flew through the Montana Legislature and received the governor’s signature on May 11. Now, Massachusetts has a chance to come clean. Rep. Nicholas Boldyga introduced House Bill 2235 in March to repeal the Commonwealth’s ban on doctor dispensing.

The measure, set for a June 7 hearing in the Joint Committee on Public Health, would not apply to controlled substances that can cause physical and mental dependence. Instead, the reform would allow doctors to store noncontrolled medications and dispense them to willing patients. Examples would include antibiotics, allergy medications and insulin.

Jeffrey Gold, a family physician in Marblehead, believes the benefit for Massachusetts patients would be immediate. “Is doctor dispensing good for patients? Without a doubt,” he said. “I have peers in family practices across the country who are able to offer their patients immediate access to routine medications at a fraction of the price charged by commercial pharmacies. I would love to be able to offer the same convenience for my own patients.”

Now that Montana has exposed the true motivation for banning doctor dispensing, Massachusetts should be eager to join the vast majority of states that reject these anticompetitive laws for the benefit of its consumers.

In the end, protectionism is not healthy. The right medicine for Massachusetts is a level playing field where patients can choose for themselves where to fill their prescriptions.

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Joshua Windham is an attorney at the Institute for Justice. He represents two doctors in an ongoing lawsuit challenging Texas’s ban on doctor dispensing, and he represented the three Montana doctors in the lawsuit discussed in this article.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3fxARJT