A House panel brushes off privacy concerns and advances a bill to create a database of who's getting certain drugs.
By Associated Press
Published April 15, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - State government would create a database of everyone in Florida who gets a prescription of certain controlled substances under a measure approved by a House subcommittee Wednesday.
The measure, backed by Gov. Jeb Bush as a way of fighting prescription drug abuse and fraud, passed over the objections of a few who said it could violate privacy.
Supporters say the sometimes deadly abuse of addictive prescription drugs is fast becoming an epidemic, and they cite a desperate need to slow the spiraling costs of government health care programs beset by fraud.
Prescription drug abuse now kills more people than murders in Florida, and more people die overdosing on legal drugs than on heroin, said bill sponsor Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart. "This is going to save lives," Harrell said.
But some opposed the bill (CS HB 397) because it may give government another way to track what people do and because medications can be a very private matter.
Harrell said measures would be taken to prevent abuse of the database, and law enforcement officials, doctors or others who try to misuse the information would face penalties.
Harrell said some private databases of what drugs people take are already kept by insurance companies and some government agencies. She said 15 other states have similar drug tracking programs.
"Medicare is a federal database that contains ... every single diagnosis, every single procedure, every single thing that has ever happened medically to every senior," Harrell said. "We are not going on witch hunts."
Added Rep. Anne Gannon, D-Delray Beach: "There's a public policy tradeoff here. We have physicians and pharmacists who can't keep track of who's using these drugs. There's a huge cost to society."
The measure was approved 10-2 by the House Health Appropriations Subcommittee. It next goes to the full Appropriations Committee.
The database would only keep track of people who get prescriptions for certain drugs, including narcotics such as pain relievers oxycodone or Percocet, or the antianxiety drug Xanax.
