Annual Medical Report comments on the New York Times article about the sale of prescription data:
However, the New York Times article failed to mention prescription data providers Ingenix, owned by UnitedHealth Group Inc., and Milliman, Inc. For example, one of Milliman, Inc.’s information exchange products, IntelliScript, is:
“a data aggregation service that provides individual medical profiles, including, but not limited to, prescription drug purchase histories of insurance applicants, to health and life insurance companies. The medical profile generated by IntelliScript includes, but is not limited to: all prescription drugs, including dosage and number of refills filled by the insurance applicant for the previous five years. It also includes, for each drug, the name and address of the dispensing pharmacy, as well as the name and address of the prescribing doctor, including medical specialty. The medical profile generated by IntelliScript analyzes the individual’s prescription drug history and provides a “map†of the risk levels associated with each drug, based on information provided by the insurer.†(Source, FTC complaint)
However, whereas the pharmaceutical data from IMS Health is sold for marketing and advertising purposes, the prescription history databases kept by Ingenix and Milliman, Inc. are used for the purpose of evaluating and rating consumers for health and life insurance.