We bring you the second installment of our new feature, PAL Coalition Member Spotlights. In these Spotlights, we introduce you to our coalition members and give you the opportunity to hear from them about the work they do and the pressing concerns of their members.

(This member spotlight originally appeared in PAL’s 2007 Annual Update newsletter.)

Labor unions and their benefit funds are a core constituency in PAL. They work every day to provide health care and drug coverage to their members while also reducing costs. It is not surprising that unions, who have always used the power of solidarity to defend their members’ rights, are now using that same power to protect them against drug company greed.

A shining example of a union fighting this good fight is the New York City Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA), which represents approximately 12,000 active and retired NYPD sergeants, who, as their website describes, are “the officers who stand at the frontline of our nation’s largest metropolitan police department.”

The SBA Health & Welfare Fund joined PAL two years ago and wasted no time in getting involved. They are a plaintiff in a lawsuit that alleges that Eli Lilly & Co. illegally promoted its atypical anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa for uses not approved by the FDA. Such promotions have become all too common, and cause funds like the SBA’s to pay too much for prescription drugs or, in many cases, to pay for them when they are not even needed. As SBA President Ed Mullins describes,

As sergeants in the NYPD, we see firsthand the consequences resulting from the lack of concern the drug companies have for the health and well-being of some of the sickest members of our society. The drug companies put profits first. This was clearly reflected in a recent event in New York, where officers, including a sergeant, had to take action against a person assaulting numerous innocent persons with a knife. This assailant had stopped taking his prescribed anti- psychotic medications due to his inability to pay the over-inflated costs. Was this incident a result of overzealous drug representatives’ misrepresenting the effectiveness of expensive brand drug in lieu of a generic drug? If this assailant had been on a regimen with a generic drug, could this event have been avoided?

The SBA is fighting to contain the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs on other fronts as well, such as those caused by Pharmacy Benefit Managers. In 2005, the SBA created True Health Benefits (THB), a non-profit coalition helping union funds share information and work with peers, industry experts and clinical pharmacists to create long-term savings in the delivery of pharmacy benefits. “THB’s mission is to make the confusing world of pharmacy benefits more understandable for the people who actually pay the bill,” said Mullins. THB works to target PBM practices that improperly boost PBM profits and drive up costs for union plans, such as rebates, spreads or utilization churning. “This has lowered fund costs by realigning PBM cash flows back to the member funds,” said Mullins.

“Like our friends and allies at PAL, we find it necessary to pursue the moral high ground,” continued Mullins. “It is our experience that the predators of the streets pursue their interests at any cost. So do the decision makers in many corporate board rooms. We are very happy to be involved with such a praiseworthy organization as PAL, and we believe that can work together to address these injustices with our union brothers and sisters.” It is organizations like the SBA that make PAL what it is, and enable us to confront illegal drug industry tactics that might otherwise go unchallenged. If your organization is interested in joining PAL, please contact us at 617-275-2931 or by e-mail at: pal@communitycatalyst.org

The Savannah Morning News reported on Saturday that Montel Williams verbally threatened three of its reporters following a Partnership for Prescription Assistance event in Savannah, including a high school student intern:

Television talk-show host Montel Williams threatened to find and “blow up” the homes of three Savannah Morning News reporters Friday while he was in town promoting free prescriptions for poor people.

The incident took place at the Westin Savannah Harbor after an event in Johnson Square for the Partnership for Prescription Assistance’s “Help is Here Express.”

Before the event, Williams took exception to a question asked by Morning News high school intern Courtney Scott and abruptly ended a videotaped interview.

Later, Scott, web content producer Joseph Cosey and intern Phillip Moore went to the Westin for an unrelated assignment featuring gingerbread houses at the hotel.

Williams and his bodyguard were in the lobby, too.

“As we were preparing to film, Montel walked up with his bodyguard and got in Courtney Scott’s face pointing his finger telling her, ‘Don’t look at me like that. Do you know who I am? I’m a big star, and I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up,’ ” Cosey said. “At this time he was pointing randomly at all of us.”

The incident is a huge embarrassment for Montel Williams, for the Partnership for Prescription Assistance (PPA), and for PhrMA, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America, which created the PPA. What’s surprising about the whole incident is how innocuous the student reporter’s initial question was. Watch the video below to see the offending question.

The question was whether Montel thought that drugmakers would be discouraged from research and development if profits were restricted. This is not even a softball question. In fact, it’s practically an engraved invitation to regurgitate one of PhRMA’s most overused talking points. PhRMA responds to any attempt to do anything at all to reduce drug prices by saying that reducing drug industry profits will hurt R&D, and thus by implication, prevent lifesaving new blockbuster drugs from reaching the market. This answer, of course, is completely absurd and belied by numerous facts — such as the fact that the pharmaceutical industry still spends about twice as much on marketing and administration as it does on research and development, and earns on average as much as or more in profits than they spend on R&D.

So why was Montel so angered by this question, a question which arguably invited a stock answer that PhRMA reps repeat dozens of times a day? It’s not as if the reporter asked “Why doesn’t the pharmaceutical industry make its Guiding Principles on Drug Advertising mandatory and enforceable?” And it’s not as if the reporter asked some obscure question on some obtuse point of, say, patent law or the issue of follow-on biologic drugs. It’s surprising that the industry’s main spokesperson for its patient assistance program was so poorly prepared to answer such an easy question.

But perhaps all this is beside the point. Does it ultimately matter if Montel Williams answers questions about the industry’s priorities and policies, or any questions beyond the mechanics of this patient assistance program?

The answer is, yes, it does. Montel Williams has become one of the most visible spokespeople for the industry. He lends his name and his credibility to the cause of burnishing the image of America’s pharmaceutical companies, and is paid (presumably handsomely) to do so. So it’s entirely fair that he be asked questions about the industry. Although perhaps Ken Johnson, PhRMA’s Senior Vice President of Communications, is the better person to ask this kind of question, Montel is fair game as well — by accepting the industry’s money, and acting as his spokesperson, he has to take what comes with that — including fair questions about the industry’s misplaced priorities.

Hat tip: Pharmalot