The idea that your medical history and facts are private is offensive to the illness care industry, which trades on your data without your knowledge or consent. So does the US Government and so do a host of companies and marketers who buy and sell your information as a matter of course. Of course, if your doctor or anyone in the office tells you that your records have been accessed by the government, that is a felony for which the doctor and whomever it was that told you can both go to jail.

Data mining, and the sale of prescription information has become routine and offers Big Pharma and others interested in your health (and lack thereof) a huge source of profit.

Now the US Courts are weighing in on whether you have a right to your prescription privacy and, as of right now, the answer is a resounding “NO!”.

This madness is just one more reason that it is imperative to fight for our health and health freedom, including health privacy NOW! Join the Natural Solutions Foundation’s Health Freedom eAlert list and donate generously to the Natural Solutions Foundation so we can protect all of your health freedoms with your active help. Remember: Big Pharma and its friends have more money than God. We don’t need that much. But we do need to raise $1Million in 2008 to bring the battle to the level it requires for significant forward motion on all fronts. If you donate just $10 per month, and so does everyone else reading this, we have what we need. Please make your recurring donation now if your health, privacy and freedom is worth as much as 2.5 Starbuck’s Medium Cappuccinos each month (even if you don’t drink coffee!)

Yours in privacy and health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Prescription Privacy?
January 2nd, 2008
Michele Cagan

Chalk up another win for Big Pharma, as we lose our privacy so they can make more sales. Apparently, a federal district judge believes – and has ruled – that a corporation’s first amendment rights trumps our human right to privacy.

That’s right. According to that judge, prescriptions aren’t private, at least from the doctor’s side of things. In fact, keeping a doctor’s prescription-writing habits private and confidential “violates the Constitution.” And, in his opinion, so did the Maine law that allowed that information to remain confidential.

How did this all end up in court? Some corporations that make a practice of selling information about people’s prescriptions got pretty ticked off when the Maine courts said those records were confidential. Those medical data corporations (namely IMS Health, Wolters Kluwer Health, and VeriSpan) took their case to a higher court and won. After all, they can’t make any money if they don’t sell our private medical information to Big Pharma, who need it so they can better direct-market unnecessary and possibly dangerous drugs to us and our doctors.

But, really, they’re doing all of this for our own good. Here’s one “important” reason, cited by the corporations, that they need access to this information (and permission to trade on it): It will help “monitor the safety of new drugs.” That sound you hear, it’s me laughing so hard I’m crying. Because we all know a system designed to sell information about doctors’ prescription-writing habits to the drug companies is really focused on selling more (and more expensive) drugs…and not on protecting us from the problems associated with those drugs.

The federal district court judge on this case followed a similar ruling from earlier this year that struck down a New Hampshire prescription privacy law. And now another similar case involving a Vermont law is being tried in federal court. In the mean time, Maine intends to appeal this ridiculous, scary ruling. And hopefully someone in the federal government will realize that the constitution is supposed to protect people, not profits.