Campaign for Perscription Privacy
Campaign for Prescription Privacy
Take Your Information “Off the Market”!We rely heavily on prescription medications to heal us: our drugs are as good as our diagnosis. But your prescription data is FOR SALE. No one has ever given consent for their information to be used in this way. |
All 51,000 pharmacies in the U.S. are wired for data mining. You cannot keep your prescriptions private, even if you pay cash. Selling prescription records is a multi-billion dollar a year industry: In 2006 IMS Health reported revenues of $2 Billion for selling prescription records (that’s just one company!).
Not ONE DIME of the billions in annual revenues go to help a single sick person.
| Data-miners are suing states with stronger prescription privacy laws | Read:
Data-Miners unite in Maine to block ‘opt-out’ Rx law: by Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer, Modern Healthcare, 11.20.07 Drug info firms target prescriber data laws: Doctors do not have a privacy right to their prescription writing habits, data-collection firms say as they sue in Vermont & Maine: by Kevin B. O’Reilly, AMNews Staff, 10.01.07 Listen: Drug Industry Mine Physicians’ Data to Boost Sale: by Wendy Kaufman / Morning Edition, NPR, 06.26.07 |
| Pharmacies throw PHI in dumpsters, sell your records to other pharmacies | Pharmacies sell off your data: by Magdalene Perez, Newsday, 06.19.07
Patient Privacy Violated: Local pharmacies on Carter’s list:by Thomas Langhorne, Courier Press, 09.21.07 |
| Your doctor can opt-out of “detailing” and keep your records private | Physicians can use the AMA to opt-out of having their prescription records data mined…Now when will Congress ensure that YOU have this same right to opt-out?
AMA Physician Data Restriction Program: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/12054.html Ask your doctor: has s/he opted out? |
| Want some examples of the sale of Americans’ Personal Health Information? | CVS Caremark’s iScribe e-prescribing program obtains absolute rights via their service agreement to all inputted data, allowing them to sell data to drug manufacturers, clearinghouses, and data analysis companies. “CVS Caremark: An Alarming Prescription”, Change to Win — November 2008 And they’re not the only ones. Learn more here. |
News
New Hampshire’s Data Mining Case Heads to the Supreme Court
In response to the ruling last November in IMS Health v. Ayotte, a petition for appeal has been presented to the Supreme Court. The new petition is titled IMS Health, Inc. and Verispan, LLC v. Ayotte. Again, these data miners are trying to make prescription buying, selling, and data mining, that leads to the targeting of physicians with specific drugs and more, fall under their first amendment rights. Learn More.
CVS Caremark raises concern
Our friends at Change to Win have created a report titled CVS Caremark: An alarming prescription, where they describe the largest provider of prescriptions in the United States as “putting patient privacy at risk, putting profits over patient health, and taking advantage of its clients.” Read more.
Appeals court rules in favor of prescription privacy!
At issue was whether the state of New Hampshire’s Prescription Drug Privacy Law could stop pharmaceutical companies from using prescription information to target physicians and persuade them to prescribe different drugs. The data miners making billions by selling our prescription records vigorously opposed the New Hampshire law and similar laws in Vermont and Maine.
But this week the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court opinion in IMS Health v. Ayotte and ruled unanimously in support of the New Hampshire law.
Our good friends at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) argued to support the state privacy law, in a friend of the court brief. Learn more here.
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| Listen to an interview with Deborah Peel on KBCS or download it now.
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To view the above table as a clear PDF click here.