CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens hand out medical records to cops without warrants::Lawmakers want HHS to revise health privacy law to require warrants.
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I’m not American, but doesn’t HIPAA cover this kind of thing?
We urge HHS to consider further strengthening its HIPAA regulations to more closely align them with Americans’ reasonable expectations of privacy and Constitutional principles
“We urge HHS to consider further strengthening its HIPAA regulations to more closely align them with Americans’ reasonable expectations of privacy and Constitutional principles”
Guess not
JFC
ಥ_ಥ
The P in HIPAA is for Portability, not Privacy, and the S is for security.
But there’s no … Ohhhh
HIPAA actually has a lot more to do with protecting healthcare companies’ “right” and ability to collect and sell our information to other companies than it does with limiting the sharing of our information. Really, it only protects our information from random strangers (i.e. nurses showing your face in their TikTok videos) and family.
Laws dont apply to law enforcement in the EUA
I wonder what would happen if they were asked for the rest of their business records without a warrant. How fast would their tune change?
Every single time I hear a story like this I always say the same thing. We need a Right to Privacy added to the constitution.
Full agreement. The implied right to privacy was necessary for modern society and it didn’t go far enough. Now it’s basically dead.
Funny how little the law people know the law. Shame on these companies. But they do have big pockets.
Maybe the public should start flooding CVS/Rite-Aid/Walgreens with documents requests, requesting the medical records of known officers and politicians.
Either they stop doing it due to public outrage.
They cant do it due to what is a essentially analog DDS
or politicians get outraged and step up immediately to stop it to protect their secrets.
This is bad, but around where I live, most of these pharmacies are helmed by teens just old enough to work there. I’d imagine many younger people in these positions would just do what the cops are asking: Cuz they aren’t paid to think, insufficient training, they just wanna get the day over. They deal enough with crazy customers as it is, let alone the hastle from cops. And if their policy of just let the shoplifters walk, why would it be different for cops?
Don’t you need a degree to work at a pharmacy?
Often, there will only be one pharmacist and everyone else will be pharma techs. I think it depends on your state what education the techs need to have. But there are definitely just certification programs (less than a year long) rather than full blown degrees for it.
Edit: https://www.stepful.com/post/pharmacy-technician-license-requirements-by-state
Some states just require a high school diploma/GED.
In Europe you do
Whoops, by helmed, I meant most of the customer facing techs. Not the actual pharmacist.
I got on-the-job training to be a pharmacy tech at a Walgreens while I was in college. My state required that you be licensed at the national and state level, but it was just a test and some continuing education credits.
My current state doesn’t require either, so the techs are definitely skewed younger. Thankfully I finished college and work elsewhere now so I can only guess at their ages but teenagers seems accurate.
I am dumb. What would cops want with my prescription information? I’ll probably understand if someone gives me examples of how this could be used against me.
Suppose the Texas cops start calling every pharmacy in New Mexico and asking for everybody who bought mefisteprone, then cross-referencing to Texas residents? Or looking through the records of every Texas pharmacy to see who got it before the law changed?
Imagine you were trans and getting HRT. Or cis and getting hormones prescribed to you for medical reasons. You think a transphobic cop cares to know the difference?
Or imagine you have more than one sex partner (it’s lemmy, so I know that’s a reach) and are on PrEP. Or for that matter, got sexually assaulted and were recommended to do a course of PEP. You think a homophobic cop gives a shit why?
Do you want your local cops knowing that you take viagra? Or that you pick up cream to treat herpes every month? Or that you take oxytocin because your hand got crushed in a car accident and the pain never ever stops without it?
Imagine an abusive cop who thinks the women n his family are property (another stretch, I know); should be be able to screen what meds his adult wife/ sister/daughter takes with no oversight?
Do you want your local police force to know every doctor who wrote a prescription for you?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
All of the big pharmacy chains in the US hand over sensitive medical records to law enforcement without a warrant—and some will do so without even running the requests by a legal professional, according to a congressional investigation.
Lawmakers noted the pharmacies’ policies for releasing medical records in a letter dated Tuesday to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra.
They include the seven largest pharmacy chains in the country: CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Cigna, Optum Rx, Walmart Stores, Inc., The Kroger Company, and Rite Aid Corporation.
The rest of the pharmacies—Amazon, Cigna, Optum Rx, Walmart, and Walgreens Boots Alliance—at least require that law enforcement requests be reviewed by legal professionals before pharmacists respond.
“We urge HHS to consider further strengthening its HIPAA regulations to more closely align them with Americans’ reasonable expectations of privacy and Constitutional principles,” the three lawmakers wrote.
“Last year, CVS Health, the largest pharmacy in the nation by total prescription revenue, only received a single-digit number of such consumer requests,” the lawmakers noted.
The original article contains 714 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Upvoted at first, but why is this showing up in the /c/Technology community?
I come here for tech related news, but this bot seems to be reposting a few items that are borderline tech related… and in this case it’s a big stretch for this post to be tech related at all.
