Protect Private Medical Information
- by: Care2
- recipient: President Obama
Did you know that it's completely legal for your pharmacy to sell your prescription drug records? Employers, insurance companies, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies and marketing firms are all willing to pay top dollar to take a peek at your prescriptions.
The multi-billion dollar business of selling prescriptions may be keeping you from fair and honest health insurance coverage, or keeping you from being hired if a company believes you or your family will be too costly to insure.
Discrimination based on private health information is wrong. Whatever happened to doctor patient confidentiality? Shouldn't that also apply to your pharmacist?
Selling prescription information shouldn't be legal, and Americans deserve privacy protection. Tell President Obama it's time to take prescriptions off the market.
Selling prescription information is a violation of patient privacy, and virtually all pharmacies partake in this business. Americans deserve to have their medical history and prescriptions kept private. But the truth is that pharmacies are making profits selling that private information.
Employers use the information they purchase to select employees based on the cost of insuring the employee rather than their skills and merit. And insurance companies use the information to weed out clients who may have costly conditions to insure.
Marketing firms purchase the information to unfairly target people - especially elderly people - who are prescribed a competitor's drug, masking the advertising as "useful information."
[Your comment here]
Discrimination on the basis of health condition or prescribed medications is wrong. Please, I urge you to take a stand to protect the privacy of Americans. Take prescription records off the market.
