11/7/16

Dear Member of the Chicago City Council,

We are writing to share our concerns over the newly proposed licensure requirements for all
pharmaceutical representatives conducting business in the city of Chicago. This new requirement
includes a two-year $1,500 registration fee, as well as disclosure of data on health care
professional outreach, medicines discussed, samples provided, and any gifts or payments offered.
The undersigned organizations believe these proposed reporting requirements are unnecessary
and duplicative, creating an unnecessary tax on one of the most important sectors of our
economy.
The innovative biopharmaceutical industry is directly responsible for supporting more than
45,500 direct and 293,300 indirect jobs in Illinois while generating an economic output of more
than $81 billion in our state. Chicago is a major contributor to that impact. Each year, thousands
of men and women travel to Chicago from around the world to attend industry-related
conferences, training sessions and conduct meetings throughout the city. These business
travelers stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants and use our transportation systems bringing
millions of dollars into the city.
The biopharmaceutical industry is one of the most highly regulated industries in the U.S. and one
of the only industries to have taken steps to self-impose additional, strict marketing guidelines.
Industry interactions with healthcare professionals are already extensively regulated by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration.
Open Payments, a federal program required by the Affordable Care Act, collects information
about the payments that drug and device companies make to physicians and teaching hospitals
for things like travel, research, gifts, speaking fees, and meals. It also includes ownership
interests that physicians or their immediate family members have in these companies. These data
are made available to the public each year on this website
(https://www.cms.gov/openpayments/).
The proposed licensure fee would not only negatively impact the biopharmaceutical
companies that invest billions of dollars to discover medical breakthroughs, but also many
businesses throughout the city that derive a significant portion of their business from the
industry. We believe this tax will make Chicago a less attractive location for medical educational
symposia and conferences as biopharmaceutical representatives would likely need to be licensed
to participate.
The pharmaceutical industry shares great concern with the opioid abuse epidemic, which the
Mayor cites as the impetus for this proposal. Yet the proposal does nothing to address this
serious problem and would simply result in a tax on the biopharmaceutical industry. Rather than

impose this harmful tax increase, we propose a meaningful dialogue specifically addressing the
opioid crisis and how to best address its implications moving forward.

Sincerely,

Amgen
Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago

Astellas

Genentech

BIO Biotechnology Innovation

Organization

GlaxoSmithKline

Center for Healthcare Innovation

Horizon

Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce

iBIO Illinois Biotechnology Industry

Organization

Pfizer
Illinois Chamber of Commerce

Illinois Manufacturers Association

PhRMA Pharmaceutical Researchers

and Manufacturers of America

Kidney Cancer Association

Rush to Live

Lundbeck
Takeda

Taxpayers United of America

National Hispanic Life Sciences Society