Lawmakers in the House Tuesday rejected a proposed repeal of last year's bill restricting "data mining" research by companies into doctors' prescription writing habits. Instead, they voted to tweak the law while leaving its basic structure in place.
[...]
"I don't think it is going to accomplish much," Rep. Tom Koch, R-Barre Town, said of the law passed last year. "You really have to look at your chances of success and what there is to be gained."
Koch proposed an amendment essentially eliminating the data mining restriction from last year's law. Koch's amendment was defeated in a 42-86 roll call vote, and the underlying bill adjusting the law gained initial approval in the House by a voice vote. If the bill wins final approval today it will move on to the Senate.
Unsurprisingly, corporations which specialize in data mining oppose the law:
Companies that specialize in that prescription research have been critical of the law.
"We don't understand why they passed this law in the first place," Randy Frankel, vice president for external affairs for IMS Health, one of a few companies that specialize in gathering and selling prescription-writing data, said recently. "They hastily wrote a bad bill that is now a bad law.
This has been crossposted to Daily Kos. Note: I wrote the diary intended for both audiences, GMD and Kos, so I apologize if I spend too much time explaining Vermont politics or history, but wanted to be thorough enough for both audiences without having a radically different document from one to the other --julie
UPDATE: Based on confirmation from law enforcement sources, pharmacies that were approached by the State Police on Friday November 30th and from legal sources representing people affected by State Police conduct last Friday, GMD can add the following to the reporting that has occurred already.
The Department of Public Safety was planning last weeks pharmacy checks ("Fishing Derby Friday") for several weeks.
The State Police visited multiple pharmacies on Friday November 30th.
At least twothree pharmacies were told to by the State Police to turn over patient profiles for every patient who received a schedule II prescription from that pharmacy.
At least one pharmacy was told it would be required to update the patient profile information with the police every two weeks.
At several pharmacies the police merely introduced themselves to the pharmacist, gave their business cards and asked the pharmacist to call the police officer if they encountered any suspicious behavior such as indications of "Doctor shopping" or prescription fraud.
Late Friday, due to intense push back and complaints from pharmacists who were concerned about requests from the Vermont State Police that they reveal confidential and federally protected medical information about their customers, State Police management sent an email to all State Police involved with the pharmacy checks throughout the state instructing them to cease the pharmacy checks. After the email went out, Fish Derby Friday ceased (for now).
It's always good to start with the constitution, this time from Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Yesterday, Green Mountain Daily scooped all the Vermont news outlets by publishing a story about state police collecting pharmacy records across the state. You can find the original piece here.
A few weeks back, Caoimhin wrote a fantastic diary expressing concerns over proposed implementation of 2005's legislation creating the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System. At the time, he wrote:
The Department of Health is in the process of seeking legislative approval of administrative rules the Department drafted to govern VPMS. The proposed rules will monitor your physician's provision, and your access to, hundreds of treatments for thousands of conditions. The purpose of the law is intended to identify substance abusers and to facilitate their treatment -- nothing inherently wrong with that and in fact it is a laudable goal. However, the proposed regulations by the Department of Health do not accomplish the goal set out by the legislature, violate the laws governing the VPMS and present too many dangers for disclosure, misuse, mishandling of sensitive patient medical information.
As CL stated, the law mandates collecting the minimum necessary information to achieve it's stated goals.
But instead of the Department of Health, we apparently needed to be watching out for the State Police.
GMD has learned that State Police representatives are going to Vermont Pharmacies and demanding complete dumps of all information about patients with Schedule II prescriptions (the class of medications that include prescription drugs with street value). After talking to a few pharmacists, I found one in Franklin County that confirmed they had been approached, and had been advised by the state that they did, indeed need to comply with the request. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy about it.
What's even more disturbing? When I asked if he knew of any other pharmacies that were being mined for data in this way, he responded that it was his understanding that this was a process that was to take place across the state.
Sounds to me like the State Police is actively putting together a medical records database of Vermonters across the state for the purpose of, as this pharmacist opined, "fishing expeditions."
And if you think something of this magnitude wasn't signed off on by the Governor's office, you're kidding yourself.
So the other day, I read where the "government" was approaching all the big phone companies and asking for secret access to their customer data. Data that it would be illegal for them to collect on their own, but if the companies would maybe just give it to them... well... who could say for sure?
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
Awful. Horrible. Evil. What could be worse?
A little bit later, I found out. Like when I read this:
The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest.
Mmm. Not good.
That should be investigated, don't you think? Especially in light of the fact that the United States Senate is poised to pass legislation immunizing AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth for selling out your rights to privacy, while Qwest got punished for refusing to play ball.
But how? Just how could the United States Senate investigate such a thorny legal situation?
Well, first, I assume you'd have to find one of the United States. And then I guess you'd have to see if that State had any Senators who did that sort of thing.
You know. Investigated legal stuff that was really, really important.
