I wouldn't get it filled.
"Justices bar Vermont’s prescription privacy law; May endanger similar Mass. legislation
" June 24, 2011|By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON — The
Supreme Court yesterday
struck down a
Vermont law barring the
sale of prescription drug records for
marketing purposes, potentially derailing an effort by Massachusetts lawmakers to enact a similar patient privacy law.
The court, in a 6-to-3 ruling, said Vermont violated the free speech rights of drug manufacturers by forbidding pharmacies from selling doctors’ prescription information to them yet allowing the data to be sold for other purposes, such as research.
The ruling was a victory for pharmaceutical companies, which buy the data to uncover prescription patterns so they can better market their drugs to doctors....
The decision also jeopardizes similar measures in Maine and New Hampshire....
Pharmacies collect information about prescriptions that they fill, including the names of patients and doctors, dosage, patient’s age, gender, and drug history. They sell the information, with patients’ names encrypted so companies cannot see them, to data-mining firms such as IMS Health....
I want my kickback cut off my name.
The companies compile each doctor’s prescribing history for each patient and sell the information to pharmaceutical companies, which use the data to devise plans on how best to sell drugs to individual doctors....
Yup, pu$hing the pill$.
More justice in Vermont:
"Vt. woman sues police over drug searches" June 23, 2011|Associated Press
BURLINGTON, Vt. — A Vermont woman is suing a South Burlington police officer and others, saying she was illegally searched for drugs in violation of her civil rights.
Time to legalize and then let pharma sell the information.
Elizabeth Ivy, 25, who is black, said Police Corporal Jack O’Connor did not have a warrant or probable cause to enter her apartment in September nor to conduct a traffic stop Feb. 18, according to court papers filed Tuesday in US District Court in Burlington....
Just wondering what her color has to do with it, but....
After the apartment search, Ivy was charged with possessing marijuana and OxyContin, but the case was dismissed after a state court judge ruled O’Connor had illegally obtained the evidence to justify the charge and he had engaged in “threatening and coercive’’ behavior....
In other words, he was just doing his job.
In April, federal judge William Sessions ordered O’Connor to pay $100,000 in legal fees to the lawyer for a pastor targeted in a 2005 drug investigation that turned up
no evidence of wrongdoing.
In May, prosecutors dropped a drug case against a New York man after Sessions ruled that O’Connor
acted illegally and unprofessionally in that case....
Oh, I SEE a PATTERN, don't you?
--
more--"
Three strikes and you're out, right?
"SOLEMN SCENE -- Friends and relatives of three
teenagers who died in a crash gathered in Bennington, Vt. Aaron Sprague, 17, Arthur Eriksen, 17, and a 15-year-old boy were killed on Overlea Road
just after midnight yesterday (Boston Globe June 23 2011)."
Also see:
BURLINGTON, VT. Chief of state's largest hospital on way out
