Take Two Chill Pills and
Call Me in the Morning
Public hearings of the state Board of Pharmacy usually offer about as many thrills as generic aspirin. The Jan. 14 meeting, however, had folks reaching for the Valium. The board, which oversees the sale of prescription drugs in Oregon, is proposing a rule to regulate collaboration between docs and druggists when administering drugs. Among other things, the rule would allow pharmacists to change dosage levels based on an individual patient's response to medication, under guidelines established by the patient's physician. Pharmacists say the proposal would simply codify existing practices, but many physicians don't like the idea of pharmacists playing doctor. At the meeting, Oregon Medical Association lobbyist Scott Gallant said the proposal gives pharmacists too much authority. Pharmacy board member Joe Schnabel tersely but politely "thanked" Gallant for his "wonderful misrepresentation of the proposed rule," saying, "That type of distortion is a consistent OMA tactic." Schnabel argues that the proposed rule explicitly prevents pharmacists from doing things like changing medications. If anything, the rule reigns pharmacists in, he says. Gallant upped the tension level by ducking the accusation, saying simply that his comments were based on advice from OMA's attorneys. That's when the fireworks started. Pharmacy board member Lynn Talton told Gallant she didn't care who told him what to say and called his comments an insult to pharmacists, who can save lives through their knowledge about pharmaceuticals. Talton then told a dramatic story about a pharmacist who saved her husband's life by putting the skids on a faulty prescription. By the time she wound up her tirade, Talton was shouting and clutching the arm of fellow board member John Block. Pharmacists and their allies say the OMA is against the rule because it threatens the cozy and profitable relationship between docs and pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies spend enormous amounts of time and money promoting their drugs to doctors. If pharmacists have more say in the prescription process, that promotion may be less effective. "The Board of Pharmacy has strong feelings about this and about the fate of the pharmacy industry,"Gallant told Willamette Week following the heated meeting. "It's an emotional issue and it's been stewing for a long time. I was a convenient person to vent on. It can get personal, but I don't take it that way." --JF Death, Taxes and RISING Cable Rates
If your New Year's resolution was to spend less time on the couch in front of the TV set, Paragon Cable--which serves 125,300 customers in the Portland metro area--has an incentive for you. The monthly rate for "expanded basic," the service that more than 90 percent of cable viewers subscribe to, jumped nearly $2 per month for the new year. The new rate, $29.40 a month, will bolster Paragon's revenues in the Portland area to $39.7 million--an increase of nearly $3 million. Paragon spokeswoman Jonene Bernhardt says the increase covers inflation, a system upgrade and external costs such as programming and copyright fees. (Paragon's parent company, Time-Warner, however, already owns the rights to a healthy chunk of the programming Paragon distributes, including CNN, Comedy Central, BET and Headline News.) Believe it or not, the $2 increase is actually good news. The rate hike could have been higher if it hadn't been for the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission, the Multnomah County agency that regulates basic cable rates. Paragon went to the commission last October and proposed a dollar increase for basic monthly cable service, which provides network programming, community cable access shows, a few low-budget cable networks like religious channels and the conduit to expanded services. (The FCC regulates expanded service.) The commission denied Paragon's basic rate increase and actually lowered the rate by 11 cents. David Olson, commission cable director, says that had the $1 increase been approved in the basic rate, it would have been tagged on to the $2 boost for expanded service. "Customers should understand," says Olson, "the rate increase is a buck less than it could have been." --JF Roads to Recovery? Environmentalists in Oregon continue to treat Sen. Ron Wyden like parole officers watching over an ex-convict. They seem to expect the Portland Democrat--who campaigned two elections ago on a green platform--to disappoint them. When he doesn't, they grudgingly dole out skeptical praise. Such was the case last week when Wyden called U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, pressuring him to include 4 million acres of national forests in western Oregon and western Washington in a proposed ban on new road construction in roadless areas of 5,000 acres or larger. When administration officials first unveiled the plan, they proposed excluding the Northwest's western forests and Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Environmentalists cited two reasons for the exclusions: Pressure from timber companies and a reluctance to tinker with Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, which already affords special protection to Oregon and Washington forests. Conservationists hope Wyden's pressure will persuade the administration to include the Oregon and Washington forests. "We stand a much better chance now than we did last week," says Mark Hubbard of Oregon Natural Resources Council. Others at ONRC remain skeptical. "Now we need him to deliver the goods," says Ken Rait. Even if Wyden can sway Clinton on this issue, conservationists still won't consider him a hero. As Jessica Hamilton of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign points out, Wyden's stance isn't very radical, because the proposed ban would affect less than 2 percent of the timber harvest. What could Wyden do to win back green support? In particular, environmentalists want him to withdraw support for Senate Bill 1180, which they say weakens the Endangered Species Act. Wyden spokesman Dave Seldin says the senator has no intention of reversing his position on that bill. Seldin had no comment on why conservationists mistrust Wyden. "I don't want to get into that debate," he says. "Issue after issue, Sen. Wyden has been a voice for environmental protection." --EM Follow-up
It's the Tax Man
The state is getting serious in curbing the so-called "bounty system" of signature gathering. The Oregon Employment Division last year won two cases against companies who pay signature gatherers, known as circulators, on a per-signature basis ("Out of Circulation?" WW, Dec. 10, 1997). Now the state Department of Revenue is going after the circulators themselves. State tax collectors last weeksent letters to four companies asking for copies of their tax records for everyone paid to gather signatures. Susan Browning of the Department of Revenue says the department needs the information to verify that all the circulators paid their tax bills. She's right to be concerned. One circulator, Julius Sabenorio, earned more than $82,000 gathering signatures for Oregon Taxpayers United and other companies in 1996 and admitted in an interview last spring that he left the state and skipped out on the tax bill. --PW |
