BULLETIN: CALIFORNIA STATE SENATOR WANTS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR PATIENT PRIVACY RIGHTS

California State Senator, Ron Calderon, a Democrat, has proposed legislation that will allow your local pharmacy to share and sell your confidential medical information to pharmaceutical companies and third party corporations (data brokers). Included for sale are the medications you take, and it could be done without the patient’s consent if SB. 1096 passes into law. The Consumer Federation of California in a release reports that, "Under this bill, an individual’s private medical prescriptions become commodities to be marketed and sold for the purpose of increasing corporate profit, not improving public health."

It has already been done, minus support of a law like this, in certain other states, one of which is where I live in Arizona. Albertsons/OSCO sold our family’s medication records to drug companies, who bombarded us with mailings over several months. Although these mailings stopped, the question still arises of where this private medical information, plus Social Security numbers, name/address, etc., are still warehoused. I can assure it has not been deleted from the pharmaceutical companies’ databases.

Californians should contact their representatives, and the media, to let them know how you feel. The other 49 states can only wait and see the outcome of this bill. Unfortunately, so goes California, so goes the rest of the country in many cases.