Data-Mining Ban Struck Down By US Supreme Court

smitty777 writes "The Supreme Court struck down in Sorrell vs IMS Health a Vermont law banning data mining which has been in place since 2007. The court ruled that the data on medications prescribed by doctors is protected by the First Amendment and can be used for marketing by the pharmaceutical companies. This follows similar declarations in Maine and New Hampshire."

Comments

Big Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Big corporations always win in the end. They have the money to pay the lawyers and the lobbyists. It's their world; we just live in it. This has basically become a country by the corporations for the corporations. One nation, under CEO, with corruption and insider trading for all.

Re:Big Corporation

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This isn't a new phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, Barons and Earls constantly vied with kings for supremacy over the nation. In the early modern era, merchants literally seized control of certain states, and corporations like the East India Company rules territories as vast as India.

The price of freedom might be eternal vigilance, but the price of control is simply a lot of money.

Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[Nimey]

We can expect more and more of this because he replaced two fairly liberal judges with very conservative ones.

Not that liberal judges are a panacea - they all voted in favor of eminent domain in Kelo v. New London - but they tend to not believe in corporate power so much.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'm mostly a conservative, and I don't recognize these rulings as conservative. These are corporatist, which I mostly view as a form of treason.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

"On June 23, 2006, the first anniversary of the original decision, President George W. Bush issued an executive order instructing the federal government to restrict the use of eminent domain '...for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.'"

Sounds like Bush didn't entirely agree with it.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[MickyTheIdiot]

The liberals love to promote laws written by the RIAA and Hollywood. How is that not corporatist?

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[Hatta]

I'm mostly a conservative, and I don't recognize these rulings as conservative. These are corporatist

What's the difference?

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[kj_kabaje]

How is giving away private medical information about prescriptions a 1st Ammendment issue or a curtailment of liberty?  Perhaps if this was made available freely to the public as well so I could in effect "audit" my doctor to see if he's been bribed into a particular brand, I could see this benefited the general public, rather than being just a tool for Pharma.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[geminidomino]

Um, in what way is "corporatist" not a philosophy of "limited scope of the federal government?" Doesn't limiting the scope of the federal government mean limiting its ability to regulate industry?

Not to mention limiting its ability to bless interstate corporations, which are a legal entity. Otherwise, corporations would have to do so separately in every state where they operate.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[bill_mcgonigle]

Um, in what way is "corporatist" not a philosophy of "limited scope of the federal government?"

Corporations are creations of government by definition. They don't exist without government protection.

Here's a limited government position: governments should not be in the business of creating and protecting corporations. See, that was easy, wasn't it?

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[rtb61]

Actually conservatives by definition seek no change, so at the time of the founding of the US, which all the current rank of conservatives pretend is about them, the conservatives at the time of founding of the US government were of course, Royalists.

Conservatives do not normally call for a limited scope of Federal Government, in fact conservatives, likes lots of regulations to 'limit' the actions of others, whether those others are exploiting or polluting the shared environment or in others ways seeking to change the shared socio-economic environment. Your are confusing conservative with libertarian and or exploitative.

The welfare state is about limiting the affects of downturns in the economy (it provides an economic cushion and prevents an economic death spiral) and of course reducing crime brought about by desperation and a lack interest in the shared economy resulting from exclusion from it. Of course the libertarians and the exploitative abhors the welfare state because it prevents the ruthless exploitation of those around them in economic downturns, this with total disregard for the impact upon the shared socio-economic environment, the prime driver being the fulfilling of personal greeds and lusts.

No matter how loud the current rank of pretend 'conservatives" scream they are religious conservatives, they are not, they are quite simply lying pseudo religious libertarian exploiters.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[bill_mcgonigle]

This description would better fit the terms 'Paleo-Conservative, Libertarian, or Classical Liberal' these days. 'Conservative' has come to mean corporatist, supportive of the military-industrial complex, and for big government to control people on moral issues and vices. Unfortunately, the Republican Party, on a national level, has become Conservative.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[SpryGuy]

No TRUE conservative is a corporate fascist. But all REPUBLICANS (at least elected ones, not necessarily voters) are. Republicans are not conservative. They're radical right-wing corporatists with a military fetishist. They're every bit the big-government people they rant against, they just think big governement should come in the form of a military policing bedrooms and wombs and invading scores of other countries.

No TRUE Conservative could stomach voting for a modern day Republican.

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Where individuals and corporations collide, in the US the corporations win.

Supreme Court Decision Disasters keep mounting...

[SpryGuy]

This after Citizens United and several other recent decisions...

Man, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito are three of the worst things to happen to the Supreme Court in recent memory. Ugh.

Re:court made the right decision

[Jawnn]

the state should not suppress free speech without a good reason. moreover, it is almost always bad policy to regulate the use of information rather than regulate a specific bad action that we want to stop. if the state wanted to prevent pharmaceutical companies from advertising to doctors, it should have tried its luck pass a law to prevent that. http://www.innovationpolicy.org/do-not-track-for-doctors-vs-do-not-track-for

Really? How the fuck is taking my personal and private health care information and selling it, in any way, "protected speech"?

Strange definition of conservative

[Kupfernigk]

In the US today, "Liberal" and "Conservative" seem to have reversed meaning. You would expect a Conservative to say "this (data mining) didn't exist when the Constitution was written, and therefore should come under States Rights. And, anyway, we should be very wary of allowing any part of the community to bring about social changes that may affect the majority in ways we can't yet predict". And you would expect a Liberal - i.e. a free-market, laissez-faire capitalist - to say "if they want to do it let them, and then if it goes wrong someone can sue."

But in fact "Conservative" now seems to be used to mean "someone who sells the intent of the Constitution to the highest bidder", and "Liberal" means someone who wants the Government not to interfere so much in people's private lives and their privacy - which I imagine the Founding Fathers would be in favor of.

In the late 80s it was the Democrats - Lloyd Bentsen in particular - that were in bed with Big Oil. Now it's the Republicans. Why the switch?

Re:Strange definition of conservative

[iluvcapra]

Lloyd Bentsen was a Texan. It's sort of complicated, but in the late 80s/early 90s the Republican leadership in the House prevailed on conservative Democrats in Texas and the rest of the south -- people who were very conservative but were Democrats for historical reasons -- to switch to the Republican party and/or to withhold their votes for the Democratic Speaker when organizing the House. This effort gave the House to the Republicans in 1994, and the decades-long Democratic control of the House has been intermittent ever since. The realignment has made House vote much more ideological.

Republicanism and Coservativism isn't inherently pro-oil, but the Republican party is where all the southern, oil producing state representation is, and the party ideology is whatever the powerful voting blocks in the party say it is.

Logical conclusion of this

[AarghVark]

Now that the gloves are off and they can mine data to their hearts content, what is to prevent them from using the data for more than just advertising? I think some people will start seeing letters like this in the future from their insurance companies: "Dear Sir/Madam, due to the number of your relatives receiving (cancer/alzheimers/diabetes/etc) treatment, we are electing to no longer cover you due."

Re:Logical conclusion of this

[Twon]

They'd have to figure out who the insured is, first, as well as their relatives are -- I'm not sure it'd be impossible with a sufficient quantity of data, but the patient's name gets stripped out of the data in question. I think this is a bad idea for other reasons, but at least there's that. FTFA:

When filling prescriptions, Vermont pharmacies collect information, including the prescribing physician's name and address; the name, dosage, and quantity of the medication; the date and place where the prescription was filled; and the patient's age and gender.

How does this impact the Roe V Wade ruling

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Now what I wonder is how this impacts the Roe V Wade decision as I am not a legal scholar nor do I pretend to be one on /. but to me it seems that this ruling clashes because of the right to privacy which was found in that decision. The Vermont law wasn't outside that right, but supposedly violated the free speech rights of the corporations. It is rather sad commentary that it seems corporations now have more rights than individuals. I am not trying to troll but if one really wanted to stir the pot with this ruling just mention that it would allow data mining of individuals who have taken the morning after pill or other similar ones (I don't know if they exist).

I find the law to be fascinating being that I am engineer. this is mostly due to how it seem the law claims to be fair, and only concerned with the facts, but never seems to be. Additionally I get the impression that there really isn't much logic in how justice is handed out as there are very different ruling from different courts on the same issue.Maybe I should submit my resume the next time a spot opens up on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Re:court made the right decision

[nedlohs]

It isn't your personal and private health care information, the patient stuff is lost in the aggregation, all they want is the prescribing doctor data.

They don't care about your health information, they want to know things like:

* Dr Phil is prescribing competing Product X 5 times as often as he prescribes our Product Y.
* Dr Bill is very well respected by other physicians and prescribes our Product Z a lot.

Sure, you mightn't like what they do marketing wise with that, but it has exactly nothing to do with your personal and private health care information.

Selling stuff is speech?

[erroneus]

Oh that explains a LOT. So every time a legislator or a judge sells a law or a ruling, it's free speech they are exercising... on all our behalves. And of course, by this standard, laws against prostitution are all unconstitutional as their selling themselves is protected by the first amendment as what they do is speech and not conduct.

Can you hear Mark Zuckerberg singing about it?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

All I do is win-win-win no matter what! I got money on my mind, I can never get enough!

Re:Isn't sharing data good?

[geoffrobinson]

Yes, Slashdotters are largely using double-standards in regards to Wikileaks.

Once again the summary is way, way off

[will_die]

Again a very poor summary and let me predict that most of the comments on this board will be from idiots who think they understand the decision from the summary.
The decision said that states cannot limit the speech* of companies that purchase info from pharmacies to one specific group, in this case manufacturers of drugs. If they want to limit the speech it has to be to everyone not just one class.

*There have been previous longstanding decisions that say that some data is free speech and cannot be limited by the states or federal government.

Re:Freedom of Speech

[MickyTheIdiot]

1) There ought to be a difference between speech by individuals and corporations as corporations are a "legal fiction" and not real persons. When you elevate corporations to "people" you essentially give them MORE rights than real people because they can be such a potent concentration of power. The writers of the constitution actually knew this... it was never their intent for companies to have more power than individuals. They were very wary of corporations because of their dealings with the East India Company.

2) Freedom of Speech is more about freedom to speak opinion, not freedom to know someone's personal facts. It appears people bent over backwards to try to make medical facts fit into that hole.

Re:Freedom of Speech

[geoffrobinson]

If you think there should be a difference pass a Constitutional amendment. Again, the 1st amendment just mentions "speech" without any qualification as to whom is speaking.

Corporations, while a legal entity, are still collections of people. I fail to see how a collection of people should lack the free speech rights of a singular person.

Re:court made the right decision

[flaming error]

> this is about doctors not patients.

Are you sure?

the Supreme Court ... ruled that "the creation and dissemination of information are speech for First Amendment purposes."

If that's all they've got to say about it, then what limits this to doctors and pharmacies? If this is allowed in the medical industry, what industry would it not effect?

Regardless, GP is right. This is not public information, it's private.

And SCOTUS is delusional. The pharmacies didn't create the content, they aggregated and sold it against the wishes of doctors who did create it and expected the information to stay private, and the State of Vermont which explicitly forbade this practice.

This has absolutely nothing to do with expressing ideas. It's just about selling raw data they were given in confidence.

I can't give you sources, but anecdotally I can tell you that there are kickbacks between pharmacies, doctors, and pharmaceuticals. Selling the pharmaceuticals data on whether a doctor is prescribing their drugs will have a further corrupting effect, not unlike what could come from selling data on who a voter voted for in an election.

Re:Freedom of Speech

[black soap]

No, I'm saying we shouldn't consider it Sierra Nevada wanting to publish the book. We should consider it what it is: the owners of Sierra Nevada are using their combined resources to publish a book.

The company does not have rights on its own, the people who form the company have rights. Forming the company does not give them any extra rights. It just makes it easier to refer to that company, do business under a certain name, etc., rather than naming all the people who form the company.

Right now, a person can be limited in political contributions by a dollar amount, but corporations do not; this effectively means that a corporation has been given rights a person does not have - and I am arguing that the current situation is inherently wrong.