This is just taking this a little too far and we know when you let Quants go wild, they will go, and go and go and quantitate and create spurious correlations and sell and market you on the fact they they have value and they do not. If you read around the web enough there are many Quants and mathematicians that warn about this. Go to the foot of this blog and watch the video from Charles Siefe, Mathematician and Journalist from NYU as he gives you the straight stuff.
Did you know that the data selling business is worth $180 billion a year? It doesn’t matter to the data sellers as bad data gets the same money as good data and nobody does a “data sniff” and all they do is look at the “scored” outcomes. We’re tire of being scored 
into corners to where we can’t escape and get denied access at every turn.
Focus in on the infographic here provided and marketed by Express Scripts and look at what constitutes a bad nick with medication adherence. I about fell off my chair reading this as it’s false. Certainly monitoring and seeing if patients fill their prescriptions is part of watching for non compliance, but when you get a nick for being a male patient with a female doctor? Give me a break! Crap you get dinged if you have “children in the household” so come on this is way over the top beyond what would be considered normal monitoring and interventions, this is about making money.
Oh but it gets better, read on and this is just the infographic and what they published. You can bet there’s some racial segmentation in there but again it’s all proprietary and we’ll never know. Why should we trust these algorithms when we can’t verify for accuracy. Gee I thought the bogus FICO was bad but this is really stretching it and I might add that Optum is doing the same thing, and all of this predicting occurs when you refill or fill a prescription. Do they sell these scores, of course they do and make money. FICO by the way says all they need is a name and address and they can score anyone on medication adherence…come on what kind of bridges are they selling here and what type of flawed data is reviewed.
FICO Medication Adherence Scoring Should Be Banned As It’s Quantitated Justifications for Profit That Hurts US Consumers Using Proprietary Algorithms That Cannot Be Replicated For Accuracy or Audited
Now I realize the value of data and how it can help us as I used to write software, but darn we’re over the edge with the extremes in trying to manage people to the inth degree of like what scientists use when looking for genomic targets in their research. People have to be able to live and exist without unnecessary algorithmic scoring and we don’t have that in the US anymore. We have been so duped into thinking any model or math formula is good for us and it’s not. We have gone too far with all of this. Certainly some monitoring and intervening when people don’t fill prescriptions, sure ask why but again to have what I see here as part of the 300 metrics used is insanity, especially when you see what some of the samples are. Pretty soon very few will meet the parameters set forward as that’s how queries work when you keep refining them over and over.
“Not using home delivery of drugs” a nick for medication compliance, and if that is not straight out marketing I don’t what is to get more business in the mail. That has nothing to do with how people take their pills and where they get them. I had a pharmacist talk to me recently, appalled at the idea of now getting lists of patients with 5 star ratings relative to medication adherence! Of course the pharmacists are beat up to get more 5 stars to keep their reputation in tact. So we are not about education now, but back to “scoring” again and quantitating something that not meant to be quantitated in this fashion. Drug companies love this stuff as when drug sales are down they go pull a medication compliance study and blast it out there to blame consumers, you see it all the time.
The World Privacy Forum wrote a great report called “The Secret Scoring of America” as they don’t have this extreme in other countries and we stick out like a sore thumb with such models that are there for profit. Heck the White House has cited this report many times, but that’s about all they get around to doing is “citing” it.
World Privacy Forum Report - The Scoring of America: How Secret Consumer Scores Threaten Your Privacy and Your Future - One Big Element that Fuels the Continued Attack of Killer Algorithms & Demise of the Middle Class Creating Profiteering And/Or Denial of Access
As the models do become more extreme though, it is easier to see the duping effect as it gets to the point of being flat out nonsense and eventually wears at the “self worth” of people and makes them insecure to where they don’t know what common sense 
is anymore. That’s the danger of trusting proprietary algorithms and queries to where nobody else gets to verify for accuracy, no peers here, just money.
It’s Time To Look At Some of the Proprietary Code Running in the US–Too Many Companies and Banks Are Playing “Techno-God” Saying “Trust Me” With the Numbers and Stats…
Look how doctors get scored to be fired, and their “scoring” is a big secret just like ours, you are not allowed to know or the game’s over.
“The Secret Scoring of America’s Physicians” - Algorithmic Math Models For Insurance Network Contractual Exclusions, Relating to MDs Who See Medicare Advantage Patients..
A few years ago a banker and I had this conversation and darn if it’s not true.
Half of Analytics Investments By Companies and Banks Will Be a Waste–What Do We Analyze with Big Data and Does It Have Value–Some Algo Fairies Would Do Better at Disneyland…
Who knows the PBMS are probably buying your credit card data from Argus, just the banks and the insurers do to score you. Read this link below and see how our own Consumer Protection Financial Bureau is buying that same data to create files on us.
Argus Analytics Produces “Share of Credit Card” Data On Consumers - Digs Up The Dirt on Your Credit Card Behavior Patterns-US Consumer Protection Agency Is A Client-We Are Paying for Richard Cordray’s Slow Education Process
Read about insurance companies using voice software to “score” your state of mind while you are on the phone with them, and yeah that’s a score to be sold too.
“This Call May Be Recorded for Quality Purposes”..Heck Not, Millions of Algorithms Have Been Turned Loose to Listen To and Analyze Your Voice When You Talk To Your Insurance Company As Algorithms Continue To Take Over the World…
Again the US sticks out like a sore thumb as our inequality keeps growing while a little relief is being is taking place in other countries with data selling. No other country “scores” the crap out of their citizens like the US and denies access. Again look at the image at the top, even if you are just a “male” you get a nick on the scoring and that tells me that there’s more than likely all kinds of racial queries included here as well, but again it’s a secret scoring system and you do not get to see it or know how they do it. This indeed does more harm than good and makes bit profits for the data sellers. IMS is a huge healthcare data broker, making so much money they had an IPO last year and of course they buy all the PBM data and rework and repackage it for sale.
Need Any More Proof That Data Selling is An Epidemic Out of Control IMS Health Files for an IPO And Holds 85% of the World’s Prescription Data
There’s a good book coming out next year called “Weapons of Math Destruction” and Quant Cathy O’Neill is the author and you can watch one of her videos in the footer of this blog, she gets it. She used to be a Quant at a Hedge fund and did financial models for a short while until she realized how too many bad models were being justified and hurting people. So again, medication adherence scoring is as about as far out there as you can get with going way over the top with proprietary formulas that are there to sell and make money, nobody gets to verify any of this nonsense and consumers suffer. And here’s CVS, look at this, ready to sell those secret scores about you to make money, at the link below. BD
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