NH federal judge over-rules privacy law - 1st Amendment protects reselling medical records.

[security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>]

Courtesy David Farber and the IP list:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ethan Ackerman <eackerma () u washington edu>
Date: May 22, 2007 5:30:43 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: NH federal judge over-rules privacy law - 1st Amendment protects 
reselling medical records.

Greetings Dave,

The New Hampshire Legislature recently enacted a law that bars pharmacies, 
insurance companies, and similar entities from transferring or using both 
patient-identifiable data and prescriber-identifiable data for certain 
commercial purposes.  The law was enacted to protect patient privacy, 
prescriber privacy, and to prevent drug industry 'targeting' of doctors 
who prescribed generics.

It was promptly challenged by 2 data-mining companies who buy up 
prescription records from pharmacies and resell the info to drug 
manufacturers, and on April 30th was overturned by US District Court Judge 
Paul Barbadoro.

Judge Barbadoro ruled that the data-miners had a 1st Amendment right to 
resell the prescription records and the State of New Hampshire violated 
that right in passing this law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101701.html 
has a "big picture" treatment of the issue which mentions the case.

It also looks like the state plans to appeal - 
http://www.citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070504/NEWS0201/70504029/-1/CITIZEN
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