On Wednesday, Governor Hassan touted a new program in New Hampshire that will collect personal information on certain prescription drug users and store it in a state-controlled database. The “Prescription Drug Monitoring Program” will be put into place in an attempt to control the behavior of the small percentage of Granite Staters who are drug addicts. Meanwhile, the personal and private healthcare data of law-abiding citizens will also be captured in this database. If you take certain drugs, Hassan thinks you may be a junky.
In yet another huge government overreach, which may actually violate HIPPAA laws, the Governor is pushing her failed left wing belief that she can somehow control the behavior of people. Make no mistake; she isn’t the only one who pushed this. It was apparently led by Republican Jeb Bradley a few years ago, passed in the Senate in 2012 and is now being put into action:
In addition to giving health providers access to the information, the legislation allowed access by law enforcement to the information.
The law enforcement piece, in addition to the cost — estimated at $2.2 to $3.5 million — caused concern during committee hearings on the measure.
“It needs to be more of a public health tool than a law enforcement tool,” Bradley said to Foster’s.
SB 286, the bill passed in 2012, still allows for law enforcement access to the information, although only on a case-by-case basis. Additionally, patient information will be deleted from the database every six months, with the exception of information about patients suspected to be abusing drugs.
So any of you who are taking the following prescriptions (legally), you will now be forced into this state database as they tie you in with drug abusers in New Hampshire: “the controlled prescription drugs most misused are found in schedules II, III, and IV, such as the stimulants Ritalin and Adderall and pain reliever oxycodone (Oxycontin and others), all in schedule II; the pain medication Vicodin, the number one abused drug in the nation, in schedule III; and tranquilizers (benzodiazepines) such as Valium, Xanax, and Ativan, in schedule IV.”
The personal information that the state will be given about you:
(c) Date of dispensing.
(d) Prescription number.
(e) Number of refills granted.
(f) National Drug Code (NDC) of drug dispensed.
(g) Quantity dispensed.
(h) Number of days supply of drug.
(i) Patient’s name.
(j) Patient’s address.
(k) Patient’s date of birth.
(l) Patient’s telephone number, if available.
(m) Date prescription was written by prescriber.
(n) Whether the prescription is new or a refill.
(o) Source of payment for prescription.
So while you go about your day as the law-abiding citizen that you are, you will be treated like a drug abuser by people like Governor Hassan and Senator Jeb Bradley who believe they can control the behavior of drug abusers. Don’t be surprised if the police show up at your home thanks to this database because they indeed will have access to the information if you are suspected of using too many pain pills. Hopefully you don’t have a terminal illness like cancer in which many people take a lot of pain meds just to make it through the day.
Not only is this program going to cost millions that the Granite State certainly doesn’t have in the budget but it’s going to violate the privacy of every person found in this database. There are only a small percentage of people who are actual drug addicts in New Hampshire; suddenly the Governor believes violating the rights of the majority is worth the failed attempt they will make at controlling these people. This is probably one of the most egregious programs to happen in the ‘Live Free or Die’ state. Your Grandma dying of cancer will now be thrown in a database as a potential junky. Doesn’t that give you tingles?
Cross-posted from Manchester Political Buzz
