Massachusetts House Proposes Repeal of the Ban on Meals for Industry Sponsored Events

According to the State House News Service, a two-year-old ban on gifts including meals in the medical and pharmaceutical industries would be repealed under an omnibus economic development bill the House budget committee began polling today.

The bill would grant targeted tax breaks to businesses and establish a central marketing agency, while differing from Senate-approved legislation over how to restructure the state's economic development bureaucracy.

Due to emerge from the Ways and Means Committee Friday, the 86-page bill would merge the Health and Education Finance Authority and the Emerging Technology Fund under MassDevelopment, according to a summary obtained by the News Service.

The bill covers such issues as a 3 percent capital gains tax rates on the investments for startups if they hold them longer than three years, extension of  the net operating loss-carry forward period from five years to 20 for all industries, a  new housing development incentive program

The menu of business development options emerged from lawmakers' hopes to provide employers with tools to create new jobs, said Rep. Brian Dempsey, House chair of the Economic Development Committee.

"We really need to go back to basics and looks at the fundamentals of overall strategies," said Dempsey.

The controversial gift ban, prohibiting gifts and meals for health care professionals from drug firms, has harshly cut back on local business profits, claimed a summary of the bill. When it passed as part of a broader health care cost control bill in 2008, supporters called it a way of curbing Big Pharma's influence over health care.

Efforts to repeal the ban will likely draw stiff opposition in the Legislature, where lawmakers boasted of new overtures to transparency and accountability in trumpeting passage two years ago.

There is now data showing extensive losses to biotechs and device companies as discussed recently at Society for Vascular Surgery Meeting recently held in Boston.

Massachusetts has severed severely from the economic downturn, repealing the ban for meals is a step in the right direction towards economic recovery.