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CVS doesn’t just use data on consumers’ purchases for its own marketing purposes.  The company also sells information on its customers’ purchases to health information clearinghouses  that then sell it to drug manufacturers and others for their marketing and promotion purposes.  CVS sells this information in several ways:

• CVS sells data on prescription drug purchases at its stores to data giant IMS Healthcare and other health information companies.  IMS and the other companies sell the data to pharmaceutical manufacturers, biotechnology companies and drug distributers, among others.
  
  
• If your doctor uses CVS Caremark’s electronic prescription service, she or he had to agree to allow CVS to sell information about the prescriptions the doctor writes to drug manufacturers and other "third party partners."
  
  
• CVS Caremark has contracts with employers and insurers that also allow it to sell data from its pharmacy benefits management business to drug manufacturers and other third parties.  

Disturbingly, a July 2008 Business Week investigation revealed that health, life, and long-term-care insurance companies are among the purchasers of prescription data from pharmacy benefits managers  -- and that these companies may use this data to deny people coverage or charge them higher premiums based on their prescription drug history.