Supreme Court strikes down state drug data mining law

[The Northerner]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibits the use of prescription drug records for marketing, ruling for free-speech rights over a state government's medical privacy concerns.

The high court handed a victory to data mining companies IMS Health, Verispan and Source Healthcare Analytics, a unit of Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer, which had challenged the law. The companies collect and sell such information.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices on Thursday upheld a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that Vermont's law infringed on commercial free-speech rights in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The law, adopted in 2007, prohibited the sale, transmission or use of prescriber-identifiable information for marketing a prescription drug unless the prescribing doctor had consented.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110623/tc_nm/us_usa_healthcare_privacy

[LiberalAndProud]

1. My blood runs cold.

commercial free speech rights?


I am beginning to understand "free speech" is a euphamism. It isn't free. You gotta pay.

[snot]

2. K&R'd

[SharonRB]

3. WTF?

What happened to HIPAA privacy rights?

[LiberalAndProud]

5. .

The case did not involve the privacy rights of patients, as that already is protected under federal law. But Vermont said its law was aimed at protecting the privacy of doctors.

[SharonRB]

4. I want to know who made it 6-3

instead of 5-4.

[SharonRB]

6. Looks like it must have been Sotomayor

"Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented. Breyer called it a lawful governmental effort to regulate a commercial enterprise."

[Enrique]

7. lol, free speech

what a perversion that is.

[LiberalAndProud]

8. Let this be on the record.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who chairs the judiciary committee, denounced the ruling. "This decision is 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," he said.



This needs to be said loud and often. What is that they were saying about activist judges?

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Oh goodie, corporate free speech wins again!

[Harry J Asslinger]

10. Yay!

It's so nice to know the people can count on the judiciary! Especially on fighting the lowest form of parasitism!

:sarcasm:

[Dreamer Tatum]

11. Yet another case of people not reading.

It affects the privacy of doctors. Your privacy as a consumer is already protected by HIPAA.

[LiberalAndProud]

13. You're not bothered by this, then?

... transmission or use of prescriber-identifiable information for marketing ...


Data mining is now protected speech. I'm just not quite settled with that concept yet. Give me a minute, maybe I'll get the connection.

[Dreamer Tatum]

14. Not in the least. nt

[LiberalAndProud]

16. Am I wrong in believing that this ruling could have impliciations beyond doctors' privacy?

It isn't breach of privacy rights that bother me as much (although there is that), it is the scope that this court is giving to "free speech" in the commercial sense of the phrase. That's frightening to me.

And as far as your assumption that I hadn't read the article, you would be wrong.

[Dreamer Tatum]

17. I think the "free speech" component is relatively narrow

as it seems the key distinction is the B2B aspect of the data mining, and not any B2C aspect.

[libodem]

12. Hmmmmm

Just received a solicitation for a clinical study that seemed to know something about my medical history. Un-nerving.

[Dreamer Tatum]

15. Then sue the solicitor for violating your HIPAA rights.

This ruling has nothing to do with what you experienced.

[libodem]

18. could have been a mass mailing for all I know

Or I might have signed my self up to be notified of other clinical trials anod that's how they knew. I'm not suing anybody. I said un- nerved not psycho.