Consumer Law

What?s that adage about saying something enough times it must make it true? 

But that seems to be the approach from the opponents of the Michigan Drug Industry Immunity Repeal. 

In the late 1980?s the conservative, free-market think-tank, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy published a report entitled, ?Product-Liability Reform:  Better Late Than Never.? that concluded,

?The state's high unemployment and its perception as a less-than-friendly place to do business cry out for action. Implementing sound and comprehensive product liability reform in 1988 would be one of the most positive contributions the Legislature could make to enhancing the Michigan economy.?

But when the pro-business lobby finally got lawmakers to pass a law giving immunity to the drug industry in 1996, it did nothing to keep pharmaceutical jobs in Michigan. In fact high-paying pharmaceutical jobs began trickling out of Michigan even as Governor Engler was signing the bill.

• In 1995, the Kalamazoo-based pharmaceutical company Upjohn Co., the company the immunity law was meant to protect, merged with the Swedish company Pharmeacia Corp.  After the merger, the new company moved its headquarters and cut hundreds of jobs in Michigan.  

• In 2003, Pharmeacia & Upjohn merged with Pfizer  and cut over a thousand additional jobs in Western Michigan. 

• In December 2006, responding to an effort to repeal the drug company immunity law, the Detroit News ran an editorial praising Pfizer for providing so many good jobs in the state.   Less than a month later, Pfizer announced it was closing the Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor research and development facilities ? a move that lost 2,700 jobs in Michigan.  

• By 2008, the Ann Arbor site was nearly abandoned and hundreds of Pfizer employees and their families had moved out of the state.

What the Michigan Manufacturer?s Association should be worried about is how much taxpayer money is being wasted because of this law.  According to State Senator Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing), the law prevents Michigan from reclaiming costs for medical care, Medicaid reimbursement, and liability for overcharges for later-recalled drugs.  Other states like Texas and New York have been successful in recovering hundreds of millions of dollars from drug companies for Medicaid costs of fraud and overpricing.