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

[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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