Golden, bipartisan colleagues introduce bill to protect patient access to drug information
Hundreds of Mainers at Madawaska mill produce the paper used to print prescription packet inserts
WASHINGTON — Congressmen Jared Golden (ME-02) and Cliff Bentz (OR-02) today introduced the Patients’ Right to Know Their Medication Act — legislation designed to block recent efforts by the pharmaceutical industry to stop including hard copies of medical information with prescription drugs.
Detailed labels of a drug’s appropriate dosage, possible side-effects, and other necessary details are commonly included when a patient receives their prescription from a pharmacist. However, this printed information is not legally required, and the pharmaceutical industry has pushed to replace hard copies with digital landing pages to reduce expenses and boost profits — despite barriers it would create for patients, including those with limited internet access.
“Mainers shouldn’t have to go out of their way to get the information they need about how their medicine works,” Golden said. “Requiring hard copies of instructions to be included with medicine is a no-brainer to make prescription drugs safer, make treatment easier for families and their pharmacists, and prevent large pharmaceutical corporations from cutting corners at the expense of quality health care.”
“In rural Oregon, access to reliable internet or to a pharmacist is not always guaranteed. But what should be guaranteed are clear, printed instructions on how to take your medication safely,” Bentz said. “If enacted, this bill will provide patients with accurate, FDA-approved information. This would ensure fewer mistakes, fewer expensive hospital trips, and less strain on families and our small, local pharmacies. Additionally, this is at no cost to the government or to the rural pharmacies. It is a practical improvement that will help rural communities.”
The Patients’ Right to Know Their Medication Act would mandate drug manufacturers to provide printed, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved information about medicine to all patients picking up a prescription. These hard copies would be limited to a one-page standardized format, and required to be updated as new information becomes available.
Twin Rivers Paper in Madawaska, which employs more than 500 people in northern Mainers, is a leading manufacturer of the paper that medical information is printed on.
“We fully support the Patients’ Right to Know Their Medication Act to help safeguard prescription medicine safety for patients and pharmacists,” Twin Rivers Paper CEO Tyler Rajeski said. “All of us at Twin Rivers greatly appreciate Congressman Golden's continued leadership and support on this important issue.”
Golden has repeatedly stepped up to defend Maine manufacturing jobs in the forest products industry. In 2021, Golden successfully worked to defeat a pharmaceutical industry-backed amendment to the FDA appropriations bill that would have required prescription medicine information to be distributed electronically instead of physically.
Full text of the legislation can be found here.
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