The problem with prescriptions is that you lose your privacy when the pharmacist enters your name, address and telephone number into a database.
Step one. Tell the doctor to make your prescription out in your first initial and last name. Only once have I had a problem with this. When I got out to my car, I noticed that—despite my instructions—the doctor had nevertheless included my first name. I returned to the office, showed the prescription to the nurse at the counter, and said,
“Doctor Jones told me he would make this to J. Luna but I see he forgot, and put in my first name. Please have him write it again to just J. Luna.” She disappeared into the back, and returned within minutes with the new prescription.Step two: Select a new first name, one that begins with the same initial. For example, if your name is Dale Martin and your prescription reads D. Martin, you can use another name such as Dalton, Davis, Dean, Denton, Dick, Drake, or Dudley.
Step three: Choose a new address, phone number, and a new date of birth to go along with the new name.
Step four: Order your prescription at a pharmacy where you have never been before. For maximum security, prepare a business card on your computer with a foreign address and phone number. One of my consulting clients has business cards made up in a variation of his name, with an address in Spain’s Canary Islands. (The address is legitimate because he has a ghost address that is available on my website.) When a pharmacist sees the address, he or she usually just enters “Spain” and skips the telephone number.
Once you’ve gotten a prescription this way, you have two choices for the next time you need one filled. You can go back to the same place, use the same data (show the label on your previous bottle), and be prepared with an answer to a question such as “Oh, I see you are visiting again from …” Or, you can choose another first name, another date of birth, another address and phone number, and go to a different pharmacy.
This is very useful information. HIPPA compliance has done major strides to making healthcare companies more diligent about securing personal health information, but your corner pharmacy is fallible just like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteJack, I'm very thankful for your new blog! You've given me new ideas for how to obtain "controversial" medications outside the reach of my health insurance and "Big Brother". Thank you! If you ever find it in your heart to give advice on how to obtain and use a Kindle completely disconnected from one's true identity, I'm all ears! The ability to read whatever one wants, free of somebody looking over one's shoulder is truly a constitutional issue. The practicality of the Kindle - its ability to be used for reading new thoughts "on the fly" has me ever so tempted to buy one, but the connections between one's real identity and one's reading material... Well, that gives me the shivers....
ReplyDeleteBravo, bravo! I'm tickled to see your new blog and will be a regular. I've learned so much from you and enjoy your writing as well.
ReplyDeleteTheresa
The problem I see with this plan is that it works fine for ordinary prescriptions, but it will not work for controlled substances or for the new pseudoephedrine registry, which requires the presentation of government ID.
ReplyDeleteThe second Anonymous poster is correct to a point - using Jack's plan for obtaining anonymous prescriptions, it won't be possible to fill scheduled narcotics or pseudoephedrine prescriptions or OTC drugs without connecting your true name with your drugs. HOWEVER, it's not really controversial or health-insurance-endangering to need a pain pill or a cold medicine occasionally. What IS controversial or health-insurance-endangering is to need antidepressants or other drugs that point to specific conditions that one would want to keep private, (MS? schizophrenia? you get the idea...) which are not scheduled, or other drugs of a controversial nature (Antabuse?). I'm assuming of course that one is not attempting to purchase large quantities of pain pills or Sudafed to support a drug habit. In such a case, privacy is probably neither possible nor deserved.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, large quantities in many states means one or two packages...
ReplyDeleteMany pharmacies are hooking into a national database(I have first-hand experience with it)that basically makes a visit to one pharmacy a visit to them all so I would say, change the first name often. Like the previous commenter noted, Scheduled drugs are now very highly scrutinized.
Great books, great blog! Thank you for them indeed.
This is especially relevant in light of reporting provisions for the national medical database authorized in the latest bail-out bill. Under it, all physicians will have to report to the gov't the nature of all patient visits, including prescriptions supplied and details of the visit.
ReplyDeleteRep. Ron Paul (himself a doctor) discussed this in a radio interview, saying the documentation obligations will be a great burden--not to speak of the privacy violations.
Re: Mandatory reports to the feds.
ReplyDeleteMy take on this is that I have (for many years now) approached my doctors and given them written notice, hand-delivered and CC's by certified mail, with return receipt, that they are not to release ANY information about me to ANYONE, including another doctor, or the courts, or the feds, or anyone else, without my express written permission for each and every such release.
I make this an addendum to the contract that I have with my physician, and I label the letter as a contract addendum and have them sign it. I also make sure if I'm working with a clinic or hospital that I CROSS OUT and INITIAL, and have the patient representative initial, any provision in their terms of service that permit them to release any information to anyone, INCLUDING the "under law" provisions. I then get a photocopy of the original document with the revisions, which I file away.
In most cases this will suffice, particularly with small medical clinics.
The reason I do this is so that in a worst-case scenario, where I find they have transmitted information to the government, I can file a federal lawsuit claiming unconstitutional interference with private contract, which is specifically prohibited by Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment.
I may not prevail, given the current tenor of the courts, but if you give medical providers ANY permission to give out information, then you have voluntarily ceded privacy rights and have no cause of action.
By strictly prohibiting the release of any information whatsoever to any entity whatsoever, you maintain your right of legal action because you have not consented to the release.
Such "releases", particularly the "as required by law" parts, are intended to protect the provider, not the consumer. If the law requires the release, the provider doesn't need your permission anyway, but by providing a release, you forfeit your right to sue them.
If they won't work with you after you make it clear to them they cannot release any information without your express approval, then find another doctor.
Seth
I am going to keep Seth's great info about protecting oneself contractually if I am forced to do business w/ medical facilities.
ReplyDeleteI have a suggestion that's definitely outside the mainstream, but privacy-seekers are usually outside the mainstream! And since I have been following a private, secure lifestyle, I have learned that there are so many things I can do myself that the mainstream propaganda would prefer I not know about. Being dependent on someone else for your needs is the fastest way to give up your privacy. :-)
Drugs & relationships w/ the medical industry are 99% unnecessary. There are 2 reasons people use the medical industry. Illness & trauma. Illness (even so-called mental illness) is 100% preventable by eating a raw (uncooked) vegan (plant-based) diet. Google "raw diet" for info.
By the way, when I was first researching a raw diet, I read that when you eat anything cooked, your immune system immediately attacks it. If you're immune system attacks something, it's harmful to the body.
Trauma (any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc.) can also be treated holistically, with plants, but if, for example, you're in a car wreck, there aren't going to be any holistic emergency rooms nearby, so you are forced to need medical services. Even in the case of trauma, if you eat a raw vegan diet, healing will be faster and more complete with minimal medical intervention.
I guess there's a third category--genetic illness, I'll call it. Like Down's Syndrome, for example. Once you're born like that, there isn't any cure & just to live tolerably might require medical intervention. But these kinds of illnesses ARE caused by parents, grandparents, etc. not eating a raw diet.
Consider this portion from a book Victims of Progress by John H. Bodley (who appears to have no interest in or knowledge of a raw vegan diet--he's an anthropologist):
Pg. 156-- "It has long been recognized by anthropologists that undisturbed tribal peoples are very often in excellent physical condition. And it has often been noted specifically that dental caries and the other dental abnormalities that so plague modern industrialized societies are conspicuously absent or rare among tribal peoples who have retained their traditional diets."
Just wanted to offer this alternative to my fellow privacy seekers who have learned that controlling one's own life & privacy are intertwined.
Do you have any suggestion for a system where you need to present your medicare card with a photo to file any prescription, from cold meds to high narcotics? Up here, in Qc, that is mandatory... but I'm not confortable to be monitored that way.
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