Editor’s note: Howard Fienberg is the director of government affairs for the Insights Association. He is a lobbyist in the U.S. on behalf of the survey, opinion and marketing research profession.

The fight to control health care costs is poised to claim a new casualty: marketing research.

A new bill advancing in California would effectively prohibit respondent incentives for California medical professionals participating in most pharmaceutical marketing research.

Legislation that passed the California state senate on May 18 would prohibit a pharmaceutical manufacturer from providing “a fee, payment, subsidy or other economic benefit to a health care provider [such as a doctor or nurse] in connection with the provider’s participation in research.” S.B. 790 will likely be passed into law in a couple of months and, absent amendment, will ban most marketing research with doctors, even when respondent incentives are offered by independent marketing research companies and the sponsoring manufacturers are not aware of which doctors participated.

The Insights Association, a nonprofit association representing the marketing research and analytics industry (formed by the merger of CASRO and MRA), proposed to amend S.B. 790 to affirmatively exclude payments for bona fide marketing research conducted by independent marketing researchers. Although it has been a while since we’ve seen legislation like this, such amendments were successful in our past battles with payment transparency regulations in Massachusetts (2009), Minnesota (2010), the Washington, D.C. (2011) and the federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act (2010).

Like many policy makers, the sponsor of S.B. 790 and other California legislators are concerned about the over-prescribing of expensive medications and the high cost of health care in general. We must educate them that the research we conduct with medical professionals is meant to improve the efficiency of product research, development and deployment, not to encourage prescribing of medication.

For the campaign to amend S.B. 790, the Insights Association hired a Sacramento lobbying firm to bolster our full-time government affairs advocacy and are mobilizing researchers across California to talk with their local Assembly members in support of our amendment.

If you or a colleague would like to help or learn more, please get in touch with us today and review our position paper (which includes proposed amendment). You can also e-mail me at howard.fienberg@insightsassociation.org