Profiting At Expense Of Your Privacy

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Profiting at expense of your privacy
-Beth Givens, Jeffrey Krinsk
Tuesday, December 7, 2004


A fine line exists between taking care of your customers and taking liberties that belong to them. Drug companies -- and their marketing arms, the big retail pharmacies -- have crossed that line. Just how far they have gone varies from state to state and store to store.

Take the case of Albertsons. A retail powerhouse with about 2,300 outlets in 33 states (including many in the Bay Area), it runs the Sav-on, Osco and Jewel-Osco chains. Filling more than 100 million prescriptions a year, the company is in a good position to develop a highly profitable and comprehensive private database on just who buys which prescription medication -- information of great interest to drug manufacturers who have already pulled out all of the other stops to market their products. Now, it is apparently time for this stop -- your privacy rights -- to be pulled out as well.

For many years, Albertsons has made a profitable business of marketing access to its consumer database to drug companies, which use the information in marketing campaigns intended to increase medication sales. Your prescription information personally identifies you by name, phone number and address, as well as showing the drug prescribed by your doctor and your likely underlying medical condition.

A number of consumers have received solicitations to extend their prescriptions or try new drugs -- letters and even phone calls purportedly from their friendly neighborhood pharmacist. Some report embarrassment, such as the husband whose wife didn't know he was taking Viagra until she opened his mail and found a pitch for a refill. It's not hard to think of worse. In fact, there are many instances where customers were told by Albertsons to renew their prescription of Vioxx as the solution to relieve the pain of osteoarthritis. A dangerous renewal, which -- as we now are aware -- could have resulted in a medical disaster for the patient.

What these customers do not realize is that the letters and phone calls are the result of a marketing program between Albertsons and the major drug companies. The intent has more to do with fattening the bottom line of both the pharmacies and the drug companies than sending a friendly reminder to busy and forgetful individuals. After all, if pharmacies were truly intent on keeping their customers up to date on their medications, they would send such reminders for each and every prescription, not just those for which they are paid handsomely by drug companies.

Your personal data is worth a lot on the open market. Albertsons courts big drug companies that are eager to increase the name recognition and sales of their prescriptions. These companies are willing to pay $3 to $4.50 for each marketing letter sent to customers and between $12 and $15 for each phone call. The letters seek to get customers to refill orders or to try something new -- say, a new brand-name drug that's coming on the market and costs a lot more than a generic alternative.

When the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse filed suit in San Diego Superior Court against Albertsons and drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Eli Lilly & Co., Merck & Co., Novartis AG, Wyeth Corp. and AstraZeneca PLC, the companies replied that their use of personal medical information was completely proper. We beg to differ, and the issue has been joined in a court of law as well as in the arena of public debate.

With companies aggressively seeking to acquire property rights to your personal information -- what you buy, where you go and how you live your life -- it's time to send them a message: What I purchase, and what it says about my personal life, is not a commodity for sale -- unless I explicitly choose to make it so.

Beth Givens is founder and director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in San Diego (www.privacyrights.org). Jeffrey R. Krinsk is a partner in Finkelstein & Krinsk, a law firm in San Diego.