Thanks to a gaping loophole in federal health care regulations, some of our leading drug store chains turn over customers’ most sensitive private health care...

Some leading drug store chains turn over customers’ private health care information without a warrant.

The American legal system has a message for women concerned about their abortion rights: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your pharmacist is your friend.

Thanks to a gaping loophole in federal health care regulations, some of our leading drug store chains turn over customers’ most sensitive private health care information to law enforcement agencies, even without a warrant.

That’s the finding of a subcommittee headed by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., which learned that all eight of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains have routinely turned over prescription records of thousands of Americans to law enforcement agencies or other government entities secretly without a warrant.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    43·
    10 months ago

    It’s not just anti-abortion. This means that they can find out whether or not a woman is not necessarily using chemical abortion drugs, but just prescription birth control. This is a step toward making birth control illegal too.

    • TardisBeaker@lemmy.world
      20·
      10 months ago

      Most all of them.

      From the article: "The chains are CVS, Walgreens, Cigna, Optum Rx, Walmart, Kroger, Rite Aid and Amazon. CVS, Kroger and Rite Aid, which have a total of about 11,000 locations nationwide, don’t require store staff to run the requests past company lawyers before complying.

      Only Amazon notifies customers that it received a subpoena or warrant for their prescription data."

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
      17·
      10 months ago

      It’s the top 8 chains. I didn’t even know there were that many and it’s got to be most of the pharmacies in the country. You can’t boycott practically a whole industry.

      The only realistic solution is changing laws.

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
        6·
        10 months ago

        What about small mom/pop pharmacies? I know its a bit different in the US sometimes with pharms being “in network” but I don’t see the surveillance apparatus being too crazy about allowing that to happen

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          If there was a boycott big enough to matter, those pharmacies wouldn’t have anywhere near the capacity to handle all the new patients they’d need to serve.

    • Drusas@kbin.social
      19·
      10 months ago

      The entire policing system of this country needs to be scrapped and started over from the ground up.

          • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
            18·
            10 months ago

            Translation: This is a fast way to make supporters of police angry.

            Speedrun1 pissing off bootlickers any%2

            Terms used to define a challenge in a game where you attempt to reach the end as soon as possible1 without completing optional objectives (or sometimes main plot segments that can be skipped by abusing bugs)2.

            Speedrun pissing off bootlickers any%

            Pissing off: To anger or upset.

            Bootlicker: In context, this refers to supporters of police but may be used to describe supporters of other authorities.

  • SeaJ
    8·
    10 months ago

    Another reason to go with a small independent pharmacist.