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On August 1, 2013, the first reporting period under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act began. Part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, “Obamacare”), it requires pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to publicly report many types of payments made to physicians, which will be public. The Sunshine Act was intended to bring transparency to these relationships, to minimize manufacturers’ influence on physicians’ prescribing behavior.

Thanks to help from researcher Vera Cooley, the Washington State House Committee on Finance amended legislation before passage on February 28, preventing a detrimental impact on the survey, opinion and marketing research profession.

Independent marketing research professional Vera Cooley testified yesterday in defense of respondent incentives at a state legislative committee hearing.

Legislation in the Washington State House could cripple survey, opinion and marketing research involving respondent incentives by creating the presumption that anyone receiving remuneration for services is an employee.

A coalition of research associations and professional societies today called upon the Obama Administration to defend the use of respondent incentives in federal surveys.

Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA-03) has introduced the Research Fairness Act (H.R. 5915) in the U.S. Congress to prevent marketing research participants from being treated as employees of research companies.

Recent wins for pharmaceutical marketing research in Maine and DC leave only West Virginia and Vermont as the jurisdictions currently restricting or prohibiting research with physicians and healthcare professionals.

MRA testified this morning on legislation in the Vermont legislature, S. 104, which would legalize research with physicians.

MRA convinced a state legislator to exempt respondent incentives for marketing research from his legislation, which would have banned most payments from pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to health care professionals.

The new U.S. healthcare law signed by President Obama today includes the Physician Payments Sunshine Act – and an important win for the survey and opinion research profession. Thanks to lobbying by the Marketing Research Association (MRA) and targeted outreach by MRA grassroots volunteers, the Sunshine Act excludes incentive payments for doctors who participate in marketing research projects.