“Your health information is considered so private that medical professionals are legally prohibited from sharing it without permission. Yet reporting by Shannon Pettypiece and Jordan Robertson in Bloomberg’s series “Health Secrets For Sale” shows how detailed, identifiable health information on millions of Americans is being quietly scooped up and used by marketers, pharmaceutical companies, employers and hospitals to boost their profits. In one story, Pettypiece and Robertson show how a simple swipe of a credit card can tag someone with a disease and land them on a list of patients sold for pennies a name to marketers. They were the first to report how hospitals are tracking their patients’ spending patterns — from food bought at the grocery store to sizes of clothing purchased — and shaping the care they receive accordingly. In another story, they show how pharmacy records protected by federal privacy laws are being sold to companies, such as Yahoo, and linked to an individual’s online activity. Pettypiece was the first to disclose that detailed health information was stolen from Sony by hackers and how that could have implications for other companies. Finally, Pettypiece explored the vast amount of personal data being collected on employees through company wellness programs and the fears around how those millions of pieces of data could be used.”
