Monday, March 12, 2018

Using GoodRx can Affect your Credit Score

Barbara Duck, author of the blog Medical Quack points out once again that Pharmacy Benefit Managers use their algorithms as human scoring machines, often using these them to justify denying access to medication purely for company profit. (See LINK).

This I surmised. You probably did too, but likely not to the extent that Barbara points out in this blog post. But what you may not have known is that one of the big buyers of the data harvested each and every time a patient uses that amazing GoodRx card is FICO.

These are the people that determine your credit rating. If this doesn't scare you, it should. YOUR CREDIT RATING is partly determined by what medications you take, how often you take them, and even the doctor prescribing them for you. ALL OF THIS DATA is stored and sold by GoodRx every time you save a few bucks using the GoodRx card.

Suppose you have high blood pressure and the physician gives you a prescription for an ACE inhibitor. You use GoodRx to pay for the medication. Later you want to buy a house. The credit company denies you or jacks up your interest rate... party because you meet some criteria as a bigger risk all because you take blood pressure meds. Is that fair? Is that what you want?

Stop the nonsense. 

Stop using GoodRx.

See also:

The Truth About Prescription Discount Cards
GoodRx Seeks Data Engineers
Why GoodRx is Not-so-good

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How can they get the scores without having your social security number? I've never given my number to a pharmacist or doctor.

Crazy RxMan said...

My understanding is that data is supposedly "scrubbed" before it is given to various companies to use. Barbara Duck says this is a misnomer because the data can be easily "unscrubbed."