By DANIEL BARLOW Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER – The political battle over a plan to track the free pharmaceutical samples given to Vermont physicians by drug companies is far from over.

House Health Care Committee lawmakers said Wednesday that they would fight to include a provision requiring the drug companies to report to the Vermont Attorney General when they give out free samples to doctors.

Senate lawmakers removed that part of the bill when they OK’d S.88, the health care legislation, in a vote the night before.

"I want to see the free samples language back in as we had it," said Rep. Paul Poirier, I-Barre City, a member of the Health Care Committee, during an afternoon discussion on the fate of the bill after the Senate’s surprise decision Tuesday night.

Lawmakers have been battling over the provision in the health care bill for nearly a month. The bill, S.88, includes plans for expanding the Blueprint for Health program, capping annual hospital budget increases and requiring insurance companies to cover some new medical procedures.

But none of the political fights have been over those ideas.

Instead, the Vermont Senate, in an 18-10 vote Tuesday night, jettisoned the provision on free samples. House lawmakers, who approved the bill and that provision last month, decided Wednesday afternoon not to cave.

The House Health Care Committee is expected to vote Thursday morning to concur with most of the changes made to the bill by the Senate, but they will also offer an amendment to add the language tracking free drug samples back into the bill.

Several committee members said they would be unlikely to support S.88 on the floor if the provision was not in there.

"If we lose the samples, I would be inclined to not support the bill," Poirier said.

Tempers flared in the health care committee Wednesday as Dr. Deb Richter of Montpelier, a single-payer advocate who does not support the language on free samples, clashed with Dr. George Till, D-Jericho, a member of the committee who does support the language.

"I have patients that will die as a result of this," Richter told Till shortly after the committee decided to press on for the sample language.

Richter said she worries that doctors will stop accepting the free samples from the drug companies, hurting patients and low-income Vermonters who sometimes rely on them.

"Many are calling this a win for the pharmaceutical industry, but as a doctor I have a different view," Richter wrote this week on the Vermont for Single Payer blog. "These samples are sometimes the only way I can provide needed medication to my patients, especially those who have little or no insurance."

Till said he also would not support S.88 without the free sample tracking in the language.

He said he believes there is a lot of misinformation about the language that stokes some of the dissent. Lawmakers are not trying to ban samples, he said, and the drug companies – not the doctors – will be responsible for the paperwork filed with the Attorney General’s Office.

That information – who got samples and what the doses were – will not be released publicly, Till added. He said the language in the bill is modeled after language in the federal health care law, which passed earlier this year.

"The federal government will begin collecting this information next year," Till explained. "What this bill says is if the federal government doesn’t share that information with the state, then the drug companies will be required to send that information to the Attorney General."

Sen. Doug Racine, D-Chittenden, the chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and a gubernatorial candidate, declined comment on the development in the House on Wednesday. Racine wrote the part of S.88 that calls for new health care models, including a single-payer system, to be designed.

He voted to retain the free samples language during the Senate debate this week.

Daniel.Barlow@timesargus.com