There has been a lot of noise about the law that was passed here in Vermont regarding data-mining. The noise rose to the highest decibel level possible: the Supreme Court, and then was deafened.
Just to get everyone up to speed, here’s the way it works. You get a prescription from your doctor for a particular medicine. You go to the pharmacy and get it filled. The pharmacy takes this information and sells it to IMS Health, SDI, Source Healthcare Analytics or other such companies that mine the data. They want to know which prescriptions are being written by which doctors, and why.
Sometime back, our state of Vermont enacted a law in an effort to lower the cost of health care by encouraging the use of generic drugs. The law was passed to prevent the sale of the information, because medical privacy would allow doctors to promote the generic drugs without fear of repercussions from the pharmaceutical companies.
The law was promoted because legislators wanted people to have access to less expensive medicine. They believe that the pharmaceutical companies charge so much because of all the advertising that they do.
The data-mining companies challenged the Vermont law, saying that the information is very valuable and it helps them to market their merchandise to doctors. The lawsuit says, “the information about doctors’ prescribing patterns is important in helping spot trends, keeping tabs on the safety of new medications and studying treatment outcomes.
On Thursday, June 23, 2011, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 The court voted 6-3 to strike down the Vermont data-mining law. In the words of Randy Frankel, an IMS vice president, this decision is “a great benefit in terms of improving patient care.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that the Vermont law violates the rights to free speech of the data-mining and pharmaceutical companies, and that “the state cannot engage in content-based discrimination to advance its own side of a debate.”
The Associated Press and other media groups encouraged the Supreme Court to strike down the Vermont law as well.
But three of the Supreme Court Justices dissented. And Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy criticized the decision as “another example of this court using the First Amendment as a tool to bolster the rights of big business at the expense of individual Americans.”
