How a legal loophole allows antiabortion prosecutors to obtain women's secret health data

Source: Los Angeles Times

Column: How a legal loophole allows antiabortion prosecutors to obtain women's secret health data

Michael Hiltzik
Fri, January 12, 2024 at 6:00 AM EST·10 min read

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 healthcare regulations, some of our leading drug store chains turn over customers' most sensitive private healthcare 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.

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CVS spokeswoman Amy Thibault told me by email, "HIPAA does not require law enforcement to obtain a warrant or judge-issued subpoena before they make a lawful request for records containing PHI." She said that CVS staff "are trained how to appropriately respond to lawful requests from regulatory agencies and law enforcement."

HIPAA applies to pharmacies as well as physicians and hospitals. What sets them apart, however, is the breadth of their networks— it's a rare hospital or physician's practice that maintains a database that can be accessed coast to coast.

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