My home state of New Hampshire was supposed to be the first to protect providers’ prescription patterns from Big Pharma. However, a judge put an end to that and showed us where the judicial loyalties lie:

In yet another slam on the medical profession by the judicial system, a federal judge has declared New Hampshire’s Prescription Restraint Law unconstitutional.

The law, which was passed by unanimous vote in the NH legislature and signed into law in 2006, made it illegal to sell or licence prescription data that identifies the prescribing doctor. It did not restrict the use of prescribing information for law enforcement purposes, research purposes, educational purposes, compliance review purposes, or for any non-commercial purpose.

The law was appealed by two data-mining companies, Verispan and IMS Health, whose business is buying and selling physician prescribing information almost exclusively to pharmaceutical companies. They argued that the law restricted their constitutional right to free speech.