From my good friends at Patient Privacy Rights:
Every day all 51,000 pharmacies in the U.S. download, transmit and sell personally identifiable information for every drug they disburse. Even if you pay cash.
The main purchasers of this data are insurance companies and underwriters, pharmaceutical companies and other data miners. Arguably, the data can be bought and sold by anyone who wants to purchase it.
Don't remember agreeing to this? Well, you didn't. Take a few seconds to watch our video.
These folks do good work and I am proud to participate in their Coalition for Patient Privacy via membership through The Multiracial Activist. Patient Privacy Rights has a petition available here – just waiting for your signature:
http://www.patientprivacyrights.org/…
You may like this article from [I]PLoS Medicine[/I]: [URL=http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040150&ct=1]How Drug Reps Make Friends and Influence Doctors[/URL]