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GUEST: Emily Clayton, Healthcare Advocate at Calpirg

The California State Senate will be considering a piece of legislation crucial to patient protections. It’s the “Pharmaceutical Drug Right-to-Know Act,” sponsored by Calpirg. The Senate Health committee already passed the act in April. SB 1683, would require drug companies to release the results of all their health studies for every drug sold in California. The information would be posted on a federal government website ­ www.clinicaltrials.gov. The bill is in response to recent revelations that pharmaceutical giants, Merck, which manufactures Vioxx, and GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Paxil, withheld critical health studies from the public.

Meanwhile, in other health news, The U.S. Senate is considering the so-called Health Care Modernization Act, S. 1955. Proponents say that the bill allows small-business employees to band together through a trade or professional association to negotiate lower health insurance costs and get access to the same quality group health insurance plans currently available to union workers and employees of large corporations. But others say it’s an anti-consumer health insurance bill which would increase costs to most consumers while decreasing their coverage. It also would hurt California’s unique consumer healthcare protections by overriding strong state insurance laws.