Missouri Is the Only State Not Tracking People’s Prescriptions

Missouri is the only state in
America
without a prescription drug database, which The New York
Times describes as “the primary tool the other 49 states use
to identify people who acquire excess prescriptions for addictive
painkillers and tranquilizers,” as well as the doctors who
overpresribe them. In 49 states, the government is keeping track of
what prescription medications you take. 

That’s a little disconcerting, no? While these databases are
touted as ways to combat prescription painkiller abuse and
trafficking, most states require doctors and/or pharmacists to
report prescriptions for any number of medications, including AHDH
and anti-anxiety drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Xanax. This
database then can, and sometimes must, be consulted by future
physicians prescribing drugs. 

Missouri state Sen. Rob Schaaf (R-District 34) and a small group
of other legislators have been fighting against pressure—from
medical groups, “members of Congress from neighboring states,” the
White House, and drugmakers—to institute such a database. Schaaf, a
family physician, says allowing a government database of
prescription drug records is a privacy violation.

“There’s some people who say you are causing (painkiller
addicts) to die—but I’m not causing people to die. I’m protecting
other people’s liberty,” Mr. Schaaf said in a recent interview in
his Senate office. “Missouri needs to be the first state to resist,
and the other states need to follow suit and protect the liberty of
their own citizens.”

Mr. Schaaf’s steadfast opposition has come under sharp criticism
from fellow Republicans, including a United States
representative, Harold
Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, one of eight states on
Missouri’s 1400-mile perimeter. “It’s very selfish on Missouri’s
part to hang their hat on this privacy matter,” Mr. Rogers said.
“The rest of us suffer.”

That is some pretty warped logic: We’re all supposed to happily
give the government access to our private health records in order
to help them “save” prescription painkiller addicts (which, for all
the talk of a painkiller epidemic,
are likely not as prevalent as drug warriors and public health
officials would have you believe). But what do government officials
do when they find out someone has multiple painkiller
prescriptions? They arrest, fine, and often inprison them. We’re
supposed to give up privacy to help further enable to the police
state and prison industrial complex in this country? (No thanks!)

In the absense of a database, Missouri is deputizing pharmacists
to directly go after those “acquiring fraudulent drug
prescriptions.” The New York Times piece seems
largely supportive of this, along with drug database and monitoring
efforts in general. The article ends with Casie Hammon, a Missouri
woman who was arrested by a pharmacist/sherifff after filling
prescriptions for 171 days’ worth of hydrocodone and 140 days’
worth of other painkillers in a 70 day period.

Hammon has been charged with a Class D felony for fraudulently
trying to obtain a controlled subtance and is to be obtained in
August. 

In an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, Ms. Hammon sobbed as she
spoke with a detective inside the Scott County sheriff’s office
interview room.

She explained that scoliosis kept her in pain and that surgery a
few months before made her need more and more relief. She described
how she visited several doctors for extra painkiller prescriptions,
but said that she did not know that was illegal.

While Detective Caid sorted through more empty bottles and
pharmacy receipts, Sheriff Rick Walter watched Ms. Hammon on two
monitors and became convinced that she was not selling her pills,
but taking them herself.

Sheriff Walter said that his small force, even with an armed
pharmacist like Mr. Logan, was simply outmanned to deter the drug
abuse already occurring in Scott County, and that cases like Ms.
Hammon’s would increase if Missouri did not get a database.

“I understand what they’re saying about privacy, I really do,”
Sheriff Walter said. “But look at this—this is just one woman, one
family. Those kids, they’re wondering where Mama is tonight. She’s
hooked on painkillers, because the system allowed her to be.”

No, Sheriff Walter, clearly you do not understand people’s
privacy concerns, any more than you somehow don’t understand that
it is you keeping “those kids…wondering where Mama is
tonight.” She’s “hooked on painkillers” in the face of genuine
medical problems and the system wants to take her from her children
and keep her in prison because of it. 

I fail to see how any of this is helping people, but it’s pretty
clear how these databases could be abused.

As Christopher Moraff
wrote at Pennsylvania’s The
Patriot News earlier this year, “if registries are an
invasion of privacy for citizens who voluntarily choose to buy a
gun, surely they are for those who have no choice but to be sick.”
And: 

If the potential of having the federal government nose around in
your private medical data isn’t worrisome enough, consider that in
2009, hackers stole the records of more than 8 million patients
from Virginia’s prescription database and
threatened to sell them on the black market if a $10
million ransom wasn’t paid.

There’s also little evidence that strict monitoring systems are
effective in stemming prescription drug addiction and abuse—even
data from the pro-monitoring Trust for America’s Health calls
the benefits of such initiatives into
question. But such initiatives can have a “chilling
effect” on how doctors treat patients. Physicians who fear being
investigated for overprescribing may unnecessarily withold
medication from those who could use it. 

“Viewed through this lens,” writes Moraff, “legislation that
trades off patient privacy as an alternative to tried-and-true
remedies to drug addiction and abuse is a political red herring
that places far too much power in the hands of investigatory
agencies at a cost to consumers.” Just to sum things up here: in
the lesser-talked-about war on prescription drugs, we seem to be
jailing and ruining the lives of people in physical pain instead of
helping them, and using this as justification to give guns to
pharmacists, interfere with doctor-patient privilege, and intrude
on everyone’s medical privacy. Am I leaving anything out?